Transformers: Schism
by Vaeru
Summary: Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. G1-based AU. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **mild cursing, mild gore

**Author Notes:** Alrighty! Welcome to the second installment of the Sparkbearer Saga, **Transformers: Schism**!

For those who were with Evelyn, Sides, and everyone else during Jux, welcome back, and for those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about, this is the part where you are utterly confused and send me a review along the lines of "Bwa-huh? Who's Evelyn?"

But that's cool. Just head to my profile and scroll down to **Transformers: Juxtaposition** and start from the beginning. Cheers!

Okay, with the newbies safely tucked away, let's get this show on the road.

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Prologue

* * *

**

_Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral  
arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance  
of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green  
planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that  
they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.  
_- **The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy****, Douglas Adams

* * *

**

"Chickadee…"

Evelyn cringed inwardly. Jamie Burke, her best friend since the days of Duck, Duck, Goose and Patty-Cake, peered up at her with her eyebrows quirked just _so_. Combined with the tone of her voice, that little quirk clearly said that the taller woman was one evasive answer away from demonstrating just how much she had learned from her college jujitsu classes, and Evelyn was looking like a tempting volunteer.

"Yes?"

"What in God's good name is that monstrosity in the parkin' lot, and just how long d'you have until the _Back to the Future _people come a-huntin' for you?"

The café was a quaint little place on the edge of the Mason City College campus, ideal for students who enjoyed mixing study breaks with lunch breaks. At the moment, it was crowded to the brim with people seeking to escape the biting chill of winter outside.

Jamie came for the chicken salad. Evelyn came because Jamie would have pummeled her if she hadn't.

She was all-too-aware of the abnormal silence around the dining room, especially at the tables nearest to the front windows that viewed the parking lot… and the sleek red sports car that seemed to be holding court at its center.

She slid into a chair, feeling the warm beginnings of what could grow to be a spectacular blush, and murmured, "That… would be a Lamborghini Countach."

The quirk vanished, because Jamie's eyebrows had suddenly rocketed skywards.

"_Lamborghini?" _

Evelyn's 'shhh!' came too late. There was a delighted crow from behind her, and one of the college boys bolted to his feet, pointing at his companions.

"I told you! Ha, eat that. I _told _you that was a Lambo! God _damn_!"

Evelyn scowled over her shoulder when the boy's language escalated, but she nearly leapt out of her skin at Jamie's sergeant-major bark of, "Watch your mouth, Richards!"

The boy froze, blinked over at their table, and paled drastically.

"Er… hi, Professor Burke."

"What did your mama teach you about cussin'?"

"… not to?"

"And what do you want to say to the nice people in here you just upset with that mouth?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Are you askin' me or tellin' me, Richards?"

Gulping, the boy straightened to something not unlike parade-ground rest. "Telling, ma'am."

"Let's try that again, then. What do you say?"

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"I'm sorry for my language."

"Good boy. Finish your lunch."

Muffled snickers drifted around the café, mostly from the boy's companions, and Evelyn stared at her friend. Jamie took a sip of her tea and arched an eyebrow at her.

"What?"

"God, I've missed you so much."

* * *

"What are you going to do, then?"

With scarves snuggly wrapped around their necks and hands tucked deeply into jacket pockets to protect them from the biting January chill, the two women wandered absently through the meandering paths of the college campus. Most of the trees were bare, bleak skeletons, the grass dried and brown. The only people out and about were bundled so securely against the winter cold that they looked like brightly-wrapped mummies scurrying around the grounds.

Evelyn sighed a sigh that seemed to come all the way from the soles of her feet, blowing out a gust of steam that swirled around her and vanished. With her current problem back in the forefront of her mind, the overcast sky and fickle, biting winds suited her mood all-too-well, even with Jamie's presence to soothe her.

The dean's words echoed through her mind.

"_Evelyn, you vanished for over a year without any sort of contact or explanation. You left your responsibilities to be taken up by your fellow professors. You let down your colleagues and your students. No matter what kind of excuse you produce, there's no way that we can accept you back. You know that."_

Eyes stinging from more than the wind, she bit her cheek and looked away from Jamie's sympathetic frown.

_It's not fair, _she thought bleakly.

"I wonder what Burger King's paying multi-lingual drive-thru workers now," she joked.

"Don't be thick. You've got more sense in your hind parts than most folks do in their whole bodies. Until someone actually invents a Universal Translator, there's gonna be plenty of people that need someone like you."

"Oh, you Trekkie, you."

"Quiet."

"I'm already off most of those lists, Jamie. My little… vacation… isn't exactly a sterling recommendation. Who's going to hire me if they think I'm going to up and disappear on them at any moment?"

Jamie stopped walking and glowered at her. "Are you?"

Evelyn stopped as well. She wanted to say, _Of course not, _but that wasn't true, was it?

At last, she murmured, "I don't know."

Jamie's lips drew tightly together for a moment, a faint wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows, and she sighed through her nose like a bull spotting a red flag.

"At least you're honest," she growled at last. "Except for that load of horse-hockey you tried to feed me last month about _witness protection."_

It was Evelyn's turn to frown.

"You _did_ slap me for that, remember?"

Jamie had the decency to blush.

Evelyn continued, "I told you what I could. I told you exactly what I told mama. You think I would lie about something that wasn't important? I'll tell you what I can, when I can, and there's nothing that will change that, okay?"

"Fine, fine." Far from mollified, Jamie waved one hand as though banishing the entire conversation. "Pull in those claws. I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For _what?"_

"Yes."

"I don't know. For slapping you?"

"Are you asking me or telling me, Burke?"

"… Hush, you."

Evelyn chuckled and threaded her arm through Jamie's, and together they walked back toward the café. Parked parallel along the street that separated the campus from downtown, a cherry-red Lamborghini gleamed proudly against the winter-gray of the city.

"This is my stop," said Evelyn. "I'll see you soon, okay?"

Jamie stared at the car, at Evelyn, and at the café across the street. "Didn't you park at the café?"

"What?"

"I would have sworn…"

"Don't be silly. You think the car drove itself over here to wait for me or something?"

"Well, no."

"Then what are we talking about? Cars that drive themselves? That's just crazy."

* * *

**End Prologue

* * *

**

**A/N: **Okay, before everyone gets up in arms, I will say this up front: I am in school now. I'm taking 19 hours at the local college as well as working to fund at least my gas and credit card bill. That doesn't leave much time for writing, but I will be working on this.

(It's been so long since I've gone on a good fanfiction binge that I've forgotten how most of my favorite stories on here go, so now I can read them all again. :3 Fodder for the plotbunnies!)


	2. Weird

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **mild cursing, mild gore

**Author Notes:** A little setting the scene here…

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Chapter One

* * *

**

_Sell crazy somewhere else. We're all stocked up here.__  
_**- Melvin, As Good As It Gets

* * *

**

Evelyn had been home for nearly two months, and things weren't getting any less complicated.

Object One: housing.

She leaned across the too-narrow bathroom counter – avocado green with a not-quite-white sink – and scrunched her mouth in that special downwards-sideways pucker that enabled women to apply mascara. The process was made far more difficult by the surrounding psychedelic, eye-searing wallpaper of orange and brown flowers that made her eyes water and squint despite her best efforts.

Her parents hadn't remodeled their house (except to add plumbing and electricity) since her father's father had first built it from the ground up. It showed.

But her apartment was gone, and her bank account was barely in triple digits – her savings and checking had been the first things her family had turned to when it came time to pay her credit card bills and her 'burial' costs. (She had choked when they told her how much the headstone had cost, and there was definitely no resale value on _that_.)

A knock on the door nearly resulted in an unfortunate meeting of mascara-brush and cornea, but she jerked the applicator away and huffed quietly at the new brown streak decorating her cheek.

"Y'okay there, sweetie?"

_I will not growl. I will not growl. I will not…_

"Yes, mama," she growled. She licked her finger and scrubbed the mascara from her cheek.

"Are you coming to breakfast?"

"In a minute."

"Dad's got a whole mess of eggs from the hens this morning."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And don't forget to bring your dirties out. I'll do laundry this afternoon."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Okay then."

Evelyn braced herself against the bathroom counter and gazed into the mirror as she listened to her mother's footsteps fade down the hall. She sighed, closing her eyes briefly and counting to ten, before picking up the mascara to try for round two.

_Beggars can't be choosers, _she told herself, _and girl, at the moment, you are most certainly a beggar._

This led to Object Two: funds.

She still had not finished sorting through the boxes that contained her few remaining belongings. Her laptop had survived, thank god, but there was so much more that was simply _gone._

Her mother had kept things that held sentimental memories – a set of Oriental horse figurines, for example, that Evelyn had possessed since her college days, and a hardbound edition of _The Count of Monte Cristo_ that had been a treasured Christmas present from her Uncle Titus. There was an old blue afghan knitted by her deceased Great-Gram Lizbeth (on her mother's mother's side) and a honey-brown teddy bear (Kipkin, and Evelyn still could not remember how she had come up with that name) who had been loved so thoroughly that his fur was patchy and worn.

But in terms of clothes, shoes, and other domestic necessities, Evelyn was decidedly lacking, and it seemed that she would remain so for a while longer, because a new wardrobe would cost money, and to get money, she needed a job.

Because that was Object Three: unemployment.

… which was directly related to Object Two, of course, but facts were facts.

Evelyn was an unemployed, penniless, middle-aged woman… living with her parents.

She settled at the table across from her mother and father and served herself spoonfuls of scrambled eggs, a biscuit, and a piece of bacon. Her mother _hmm_ed and promptly scooped a second mound of eggs onto her daughter's plate as well as a spoonful of pepper gravy alongside the biscuit. Evelyn tried not to grimace and glanced at Maria's plate of wheat toast and honey.

"Mama…"

"Hush. You're too skinny. What did you eat while you were away, anyway? Air?"

_Nutrient-rich mattress foam, thanks._

"I'm not that hungry."

"Just do your best."

Evan Hughes chuckled quietly, turning it into a cough when his wife glanced his way, but they both smiled a little, and Evelyn resigned herself to (yet another) ridiculously rich country breakfast and (yet another) interminable day of indigestion.

Because as it turned out, after a year of living off nothing more than water and 'nutrient-rich mattress foam,' her insides were not nearly as pleased as she was to be home once more, and her mother didn't seem to be getting the memo.

"Oh. Maria, I've forgotten my pills." Evan glanced at his wife. "Would you grab them, when you get your vitamin?"

"Sure." Maria wiped her mouth and tucked the napkin under the edge of her plate, pushing away from the table.

"Not now, just when you feel like it."

"Best go while I'm thinking about it."

Evan watched until Maria was out of sight, and then reached for Evelyn's plate, deftly swapping it for his own – nearly cleaned, with a small, untouched mound of eggs and mere smears of gravy and crumbs of biscuit remaining. He winked at her, and Evelyn mouthed a heartfelt _thank you_.

Maria returned, and Evelyn and Evan turned their attention to their plates.

"Did you go somewhere last night, Evelyn?"

"Sir?"

"I thought you'd left that... car–" Her father still refused to say the L-word, unable to reconcile the thought of his daughter behind the wheel of a car worth more than some houses. "–in the barn, but it was on the driveway this morning."

_Oh, for the love of…_

Evelyn felt the briefest desire to bang her head on the table, but she resisted.

And thus, there was Object Four.

"Yeah – er, yessir. I made a quick loop of town. I couldn't sleep."

"I didn't realize you liked driving so much. Isn't this the third time?"

"Fourth," she muttered, stabbing at a clump of egg viciously.

"Will the owner mind you driving it so much?"

"I doubt it. He says that it's not good for it to just sit in the garage. He has some others he said he wants 'exercised,' too."

"Strange," murmured Maria.

"He says as long as I'm doing the translation work for him, I might as well have some perks."

Her father hummed noncommittally, and Evelyn wondered how long the story would hold.

Evelyn stirred her eggs, spreading them out in an artistic illusion that made it appear as though she had eaten much more than she had, and made her escape while her parents were still eating.

Wrapping up in one of her father's extra winter coats and stomping into fleece-lined boots given to her by her sister Lizzy, she exited into the icy gray morning. Her nose was numb within minutes, but anger kept her warm as she stalked across the porch and across the gravel driveway, aiming for the distinctive gleam of red paint in the shadows within the barn-renovated-as-a-garage.

The back of the Lamborghini was all hard lines and harsh angles, blood red panels gleaming like scales on a dragon's back. As Evelyn came abreast of the car's rear, she halted, peered thoughtfully at the tail lights and the vanity plate – SSWIPE1 – and landed a solid kick to the bumper that reverberated all the way up her leg and to her skull.

The car's frame jolted with an affronted sounding _'meep!'_ of the horn, and Evelyn kicked it again.

"You _moron!_" she hissed. "You idiotic, insufferable, self-centered, Pit-spawned glitch! What part of _subtle _do you not get?"

The actual sounds that emerged from her mouth were more along the lines of buzzes, hisses, clicks, and the occasional whistle than simple English, but she knew what she was saying, and so did the car.

Because the car was a large part of Object Four: giant-alien-robots-that-masquerade-as-cars.

"Fraggit, Evelyn!" The car's engine rumbled to life so forcefully that it quivered on its tires. "Whatever happened to 'Hi, Sides' or 'Good morning, handsome, how did you recharge?'"

"If you don't stop acting like some bizarre reject from the Knight Rider franchise, I'm going to deflate all your tires and leave you for scrap in the hood somewhere. Sunstreaker would help, I'm sure, and Prowl would probably consider it a gift from Primus to be rid of you."

"… I'm not feeling the love."

"Then stop wandering off like some sort of retarded, navigationally challenged beagle and stay where I leave you for once! You think people don't notice when you swap parking places without anyone driving? Humans may be clueless a lot of the time, but we're not_ completely _brain-dead!"

"Me and Sunny went for a look around. I came back!"

"My hand to God, Sideswipe, I will start carrying a wheel clamp with me if you don't wise up and learn the meaning of 'stay'!"

"What's a wheel clamp…?"

"_Google it."_

The sound of the house door opening and closing derailed any further argument. The car's engine shut off, and Evelyn stalked back toward the house before she could be tempted to kick the infuriating vehicle again.

_Great. Now my foot hurts._

Her father eyed her curiously as she approached.

"Evelyn?"

"Just moving him back into the barn," she said.

"Ah."

Yes, her life was officially weird.

* * *

**End Chapter One

* * *

**

**A/N: **Okay, short and slow starting, I know, and unanswered questions abound, but have some faith. It will all be explained in time, and more mechs in the next chapter. ;3


	3. Return

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **mild cursing, mild gore

**Author Notes:** Belated Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope you enjoy the ongoing insanity that is Evelyn's life. :3

Also, if you have the time, visit my profile and check out the poll at the top. I'd appreciate it! If you'd like to comment, visit my Deviant Art journal (screenname: mythical-darkener).

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Chapter Two

* * *

**

_**Lutan:**__ I find it odd, Captain, that a man of your experience has such difficulty in understanding ordinary politeness.  
__**Captain Jean-Luc Picard:**__ Such as the politeness of saying 'please' before abducting someone?  
_**- Star Trek: The Next Generation

* * *

**

Evelyn's second trip to the Cybertronian ship Metellus Cursor was completely unlike the first – except for the whole 'involuntarily abducted by the being known as Sideswipe' part.

Wriggling futily within the red mech's grip, Evelyn reflected that this could rapidly become a Very Bad Habit.

"You are _dead,"_ she snarled. "Deader than dead. I'll have you recommissioned as a garbage truck, just you wait!"

"I told you Prowl wanted to see you."

"And I told you that I had a job interview to deal with first!"

The mech didn't even glance at her, more concerned with brushing aside the bare, clawlike branches that might pose a threat to his paintjob. Here, deep within the Tagwahi National Forest, the only noise came from the grinding, crunching, moaning clashes between Cybertronian feet and Mother Earth. The feet were winning.

"Hey, you're the one who said I needed to start following directions."

Evelyn glared. She was dressed in a very fashionable – and therefore, very uncomfortable – ensemble courtesy of Jamie's extensive wardrobe: silk blouse, tailored red jacket, long-enough-for-decency-but-short-enough-for-fashion skirt, dark hose, and high-heels that more than proved the old maxim that 'beauty is pain.' It was an outfit meant to convey professionalism, not to conserve body heat, and if she were not so angry, she would probably have been freezing.

"Do you have the slightest, most _infinitesimal _idea of how long it took me to get dressed this morning?"

"Um, yes. Nearly half a joor, thank you. I thought I was going to rust before you let us get on the road."

She squirmed again, but she might as well have been a gerbil in the hands of some over-affectionate kindergartner. She subsided, huffing, and moaned, "… This is passive-aggressiveness, isn't it? You're still mad about me kicking you, and this is you getting me back."

"You really think I'm that petty?"

"_Yes."_

Sideswipe walked onwards. Evelyn muttered uncomplimentary things about his programming, his manufacturer, and his paintjob.

She knew they were approaching their destination when the ever-present ringing in her ears, a constant plague in the company of mechs, reached a new pitch. They were walking along the base of a ridge that towered over even the thirty-foot mech's head, but out of the corner of her eye, Evelyn could see it flicker strangely, and then:

"Heya, Evy!"

Her head whipped around with enough speed and force to inflict whiplash, but she didn't care. There, standing in a massive, square hole that cut into the ridge like a doorway standing in midair, were Prowl and Jazz. It was like seeing salvation in mechanical form.

"Jazz!" Evelyn redoubled her struggles. "Get me away from this idiot, and then _kill him."_

The saboteur's ever-present smile dwindled away.

"'Sides, mech, what're ya doin'?"

Jazz looked purely perplexed. Prowl looked like he had a migraine.

"Sideswipe, you were supposed to _escort _her, not _abduct _her."

The red mech huffed moodily and passed Evelyn over to Jazz's hands. "She's here, isn't she?"

Jazz cradled Evelyn gently, and the woman curled against his fingers in a fruitless effort to conserve body-heat.

"Yeah, man, but snatchin' an' grabbin'? Not cool."

"She wouldn't stay still."

"_You think?"_ Evelyn seriously considered lobbing one of those godforsaken high heels at the warrior's face, but they were made of Italian leather and dearer to Jamie than anything less than her firstborn. She settled for sitting, and shivering, and fuming. "I can't believe I'm missing a job interview with a _very prestigious firm _for the Monty Python version of _E.T.!_"

Jazz snickered and began to rub one of his fingers between her shoulderblades and up and down her spine. Evelyn sent a narrow-eyed glance up at the saboteur, considered being insulted, and finally gave in to the comfort of the impromptu massage.

At some point – she wasn't certain quite when – her status had morphed from 'little critter with a weird energy reading' to a bizarre mix of 'honored colleague' and 'beloved pet.'

She guessed it was only fair, though, since she was still having trouble reconciling 'giant alien warrior-mechs' with 'convenient taxi-service.'

_Next thing you know, they'll be trying to get me chipped._

"I am very sorry, Evelyn," said Prowl. The tactician was eyeing the unrepentant (and now sulking) form of Sideswipe, his expression implying that there were unpleasant assignments that needed to be completed and that Sideswipe had just volunteered. "The necessary preparations have been completed for Optimus to depart for the Hub, and Ratchet needs to see you."

"Oh." She perked up slightly. She had not seen the grouchy medic since arriving home, and she had found herself missing his constant, snarky presence. "Ratchet's here?"

"No. He's overseeing the last examinations on the away team. We're to bring you to Metellus."

"… come again?"

Jazz seemed to sense her abrupt switch from _almost relaxed _to _barely restrained panic_, because he cupped one hand around her back and said, voice low and soothing, "Hey, hey, don't grind your gears – it won't even take half a joor. We gotta' take the shuttle up anyway t' pick up th' rest o' th' team an' bring 'em back down. Ratch jus' wanted t' see ya along with th' others. You'll be back before th' sun sets."

_Deep breath. In. Out. _

"You swear?"

"Cross my spark an' hope ta rust."

The bizarre looks that both Prowl and Sideswipe directed their way at that comment almost made the wreck of a day worthwhile.

* * *

It was quite a different experience. She was not alone in the shuttle – Jazz kept her company the entire way, and they chatted about nonsensical nothings until they reached Metellus. The docking bay was chilly and echoingly empty, but she had just come from the Georgian equivalent of deep winter, so the temperature was not terribly uncomfortable. She was conscious and clean and well-dressed instead of unconscious and filthy and harried beyond bearing.

Most importantly, there was only one consciousness in her skull, and that was her own.

_How things change._

There were familiar faces in the hallways, and she happily chatted with them as she was able. Brawn was especially friendly, genially inquiring after her home and health as though he were her uncle instead of a giant robotic alien organism from another galaxy. Prowl hurried Jazz along, though, reminding the music-loving mech that "keeping Ratchet waiting is never a wise idea," and Sideswipe sulked along behind them, engine grumbling quietly.

In the medbay were several familiar faces – Bluestreak, seated upon one of the massive tables and kicking his feet like an oversized schoolboy, Hound leaning against a table a little farther back, Sunstreaker standing sullenly in one of the back corners, arms crossed over his chest… and no sign of Ratchet.

Prowl sighed. "Of course, he wouldn't be here."

"An' you were worried we'd keep him waitin'."

Sideswipe stepped around the pair and went to join his brother in the corner, still glowering sullenly. Evelyn suspected that his time in the shuttle with Prowl had been less than fun, and now he leaned against the wall beside Sunstreaker with his arms crossed and a dark scowl firmly in place.

_Now they really look like twins._

Prowl, stoic as ever, merely turned to Jazz and said, "I'll speak with Optimus. You find Ratchet. He's probably in the lab with Wheeljack."

"Aye, aye, Prowler."

And the white mech was gone, striding out of the 'bay. Jazz snickered quietly to himself.

"Well, Evy, you okay waitin' here while I go hunt down our good doc?"

"Absolutely. I haven't seen Blue in ages."

"Blue it is, then."

"Evy!" Bluestreak beamed at her as Jazz set her gently beside him on the table. She waved to the black and white mech as he left the 'bay, following in Prowl's footsteps. "I missed you! You look… different." The brilliant grin dwindled to a curious frown, and he leaned down nearer to her. "Is that paint on your face?"

Torn between laughter and blushing (she managed a little of both), she tilted her head back and allowed him a better look. "It's called makeup. We, ah… we 'paint' our faces, sometimes, to make ourselves more attractive."

"Oh. That's, um, neat – it sounds like when one of us gets a new paintjob or something. Is it permanent? Does it hurt?"

"No, and no." She tucked her skirt close to the back of her legs and eased into a kneeling position and from there to a sitting position, her legs tucked beneath her. After a moment of internal debate, she slid off the high heels and set them to one side. "You'd be amazed, Blue, at some of the bizarre stuff humans do to look good. Those, for example." She gestured at the shoes. "They ruin your balance, they slow you down, and they make your feet hurt if you wear them too long – but here I am, because they make me look good. It's crazy."

Bluestreak actually picked up one of the heels for a closer look, pinching it delicately between a thumb and forefinger.

"Is it a weapon of some sort? This sharp bit here?"

"Nope. Absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever – just that it makes me look attractive."

"Oh."

For once, the loquacious mech seemed to have no words. Evelyn grinned at him.

"I know. Humans are weird."

"Huh. Looks a bit like a seeker's heel-turbine, don't it?"

Evelyn craned her head back, catching sight of a swathe of green and grey that was Hound. The tracker was peering at the shoe as well, expression pensive.

"A what of a who?" she asked, but Bluestreak suddenly looked as though he were holding something more akin to a pit viper than an Italian leather high heel.

"You're _right_," breathed the younger mech, optics round. "It does!"

Evelyn tried again. "It looks like a what?"

Bluestreak set the shoe down next to its sibling. "It looks like a seeker's foot – pointy heel and all. That's so _strange. _Why in the world would a human foot-covering look like a seeker jet-engine? Do you think humans have met seekers before? Maybe they came to scout the planet before and someone saw them. What do you think, Hound?"

"I think it's a funny coincidence, Blue. Don't rev yourself up over it." Hound grinned at Evelyn. "How are you, then, Evy?"

"I'm a little bit confused. Why the sudden interest in my footwear, and what's a seeker?"

"They're a certain model of Cybertronian, like Prowl and Bluestreak or Cliffjumper and Bee. They're… bad news, to be brief. They're the main part of the Decepticon's elite warriors – flyers that have the ability to travel through space. When they transform, their engines are on the bottoms of their feet, like your foot-covering."

Evelyn could not help but grin. "Are you telling me that evil, elite Decepticon warriors wear high-heels?"

"Is that funny?"

She laughed. "Let's just say it's a girl thing."

The 'bay doors hissed open.

"Alright, alright, everyone in line! Cranial uplink ports open, firewalls disabled – let's get this over and done with. You too, Mirage! I know you're in here – turn off that rat-fragged cloak and line up with everyone else. Hello, Evelyn."

"I missed you too, Ratchet."

The medic stalked past, a metal box in his hands. Wheeljack waved to her as he followed the medic. Jazz sauntered in at their heels and fell in line with the rest of the mechs as they assembled in front of Ratchet. Evelyn watched with interest – Jazz had said something about 'inoculations for th' away team.'

The medic hooked up wires from the back of his helm to the metal box. One by one, each mech stood with Ratchet, and the medic hooked up wires from the metal box to the back of each mech's helm. She could see various ports, like those on the back of a computer, there beneath the armor, previously hidden beneath various protective panels. There was a moment of stillness, the patient would twitch, and Ratchet would detach the wires, and the next mech in line would move up.

_Inoculations? _she wondered. _Like… anti-virus software?_

It made a bizarre kind of sense. She knew all-too-well from her experiences with the few mechs who had already been to earth that they enjoyed browsing the internet, and since their computers and their brains were one and the same, downloading a virus was potentially a very dangerous situation.

Things went fairly quickly. Soon, all of the mechs had been through the process: Hound, Bluestreak, Mirage, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, and Jazz.

As Ratchet unhooked the wires from his helm, Jazz said, "Slippin' a bit there, doc? It took ya nearly four orns t' come up with a bunch of antivirus protocols?"

"Don't be any more of a pain in my aft than you normally are, you glitch-ridden fragger." The medic yanked the last wire out with slightly more force than the others. "It took me about two joors to make those protocols. It took Wheeljack and me four orns to cobble something to keep Evelyn off the sensor grid."

Jazz rubbed the back of his helm. "She is kinda' noticeable."

"If by 'noticeable' you mean 'glows like a mini-nova in deep space,'" grumbled Sunstreaker.

"Precisely. Wheeljack?"

The engineer beamed – or, at least, his headfins did – as he approached Evelyn.

"Alright, then, let's try these on for size, shall we?" He flicked one hand the way she had seen mechs do when they pulled something from thin air – subspace, Sideswipe had called it – and there were suddenly several gleaming metallic objects atop his palm: two identical rings, brilliant silver, slightly larger around than human-sized bangle bracelets, and one item that was clearly a necklace of some sort, a tiny pendant on a thin chain.

She picked up the necklace first. The pendant was a simple metal circle, roughly the size of a quarter, and the 'chain' was actually thin metal filament, the kind that Wheeljack had laying around his lab from his tiniest and most delicate wiring projects. There was no clasp, just a clean loop.

"It's an emergency beacon and comm-unit," explained Wheeljack. "If you want to activate it, just press it until you hear a click. It will activate an open comm line that any Autobot in range will be able to hear. We couldn't fit in a speaker, though, I'm afraid, so it's strictly one-way."

"And emphasis on the word 'emergency,'" said Ratchet. "Otherwise the other device is fair useless."

"Oh, yes." The inventor's headfins blinked blindingly bright with his enthusiasm, and he nudged at the two tiny rings still upon his palm. "This is the real prize. Try them on, go on."

Evelyn slipped the loop of filament over her head, the pendant hanging to just above her breasts. She picked up one of the rings, a flat metal band bent into a circle, polished and unadorned on the outside but bearing intricate circuit-esque designs within.

"What am I looking at here?"

"I call them 'miniaturized, portable anti-wave energy-signature identification and nulli—"

"Jamming devices," said Ratchet. "It's a linked set of jamming devices, designed to nullify any bio-electric signals that may emanate from your body, including the Key's energy signature. One on each arm. They run from excess bio-electric energy from your body – the interior circuitry of _both _bands has to be in contact with your skin at all times in order for them to work correctly. They'll hide you from most Cybertronian sensors."

Evelyn considered the simple metal ring. "Huh."

She set the ring on the table beside her long enough to shuck off her jacket and roll up her sleeves. The metal of the ring was oddly warm as she slid it over her hand and up her arm until it rested snugly around her bicep. She repeated the process with the second one, and as she settled it firmly into place, a faint tingle ran over her skin, standing the hair along her arms and neck on end, and she was abruptly the center of attention of every mech in the room.

"Whoa," said Bluestreak.

The corners of Wheeljack's optics crinkled happily and his headfins flashed as he turned to the medic. "I'd count that as a success, wouldn't you, Ratchet?"

"I've still got her on thermal, visual, and sonic," said Ratchet.

"Yes, but you can't cloak those – not unless you want to figure out how to miniaturize Mirage's stealth generator, and I don't even know where I'd begin with trying to make that compatible with an organic." Suddenly pensive, he murmured, "Though… that is a fascinating idea…"

"No, 'Jack. And where the frag is Prowl?"

"Last minute check with Optimus," said Jazz.

"If he thinks he's going down there again without updated virus protocols, he's got some serious wires crossed."

"He'll be down. We'll finish loadin' up the shuttle. Promised Evy we'd have her back by midday refueling."

"Right." The medic sighed the sigh of the terminally annoyed. "Hope you enjoy your little vacation – you do realize that with you _and_ Prowl leaving, that leaves me as second-in-command? Do you have the faintest clue how much paperwork Prowl goes through in one rotation?"

"Why d'ya think I never pushed for a promotion?" Jazz grinned and patted Ratchet on the shoulder as he walked past, prompting a loud snarl of the medic's systems. "Come on, Evy. We'll have you back planetside in no time flat. Let's move out, mechs – everybody on th' shuttle an' ready t' go in th' next breem, or ya can join Sides on th' imminent weather patrol roster."

"Already?" asked Bluestreak. "That's a new record, isn't it, Jazz?"

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were the first to leave the 'bay. Bluestreak followed, urged along by Hound. Mirage had vanished, and Jazz paused to let Evelyn scoop up her shoes and scramble onto his palm before he headed for the door.

"Kinda' weird, seein' ya but not seein' ya. I got used t' knowin' where you were on my sensor grid."

"It doesn't feel any different to me at all."

As the doors opened for them, memory struck her.

"Oh, yeah." She patted Jazz's palm to catch his attention. "Hang on a sec, Jazz. I forgot something. Ratchet?" She swiveled. The medic had turned to face her, his expression almost-but-not-quite annoyed. "I meant to tell you earlier. Sideswipe kidnapped me. Again."

Almost-but-not-quite morphed instantly to _thoroughly_.

"I'll take care of it."

She beamed. "You're the best."

* * *

**End Chapter Two**


	4. Fury

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **cursing

**Author Notes:** Where to begin…?

It's been exactly one year since I've updated any fanfic – to the day. I've been planning a revival for a while now (you can ask Cafei, she'll vouch). So today is the return of Schism (and other fics), as well as the launch of my blog, **Scriptophrenia** (dot-wordpress-dot-com), where you can find all things writing: fanfic, original, and general yammering, because it's impossible for me not to yammer.

You'll also find a bonus Transformers drabble there under the Fanfiction: Updates page, because I love ya'll like that.

Now, on with the show!

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Chapter Three**

* * *

_If anger proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury;  
if from a small cause, it is peevishness;  
and so is always either terrible or ridiculous.__**  
– Jeremy Taylor**_

* * *

There were days – and they were growing in number with alarming speed – that Evelyn wished her new entourage had chosen forms a little less conspicuous.

Like Studebakers.

She had run into the library to print off copies of her résumé, leaving her current bodyguard parked between a minivan and a station wagon in the vain hope that their bulk might shield his supremely unsubtle form from prying eyes. She surely set some sort of speed record for signing in, logging on, printing out, and racing off, but who could blame her? She found herself plagued with the same sort of dread that parents felt when leaving their offspring unattended – except that, even at their most devious, most tweenagers were unlikely to overturn cars, smash buildings, and otherwise rampage unchecked because someone happened to bump into them in passing.

Sunstreaker, on the other hand…

She had beamed at the expression on Sideswipe's face when the red warrior was informed of his new status as 'gofer' – all the worst scouting trips, in the worst weather conditions, on the worst maintained roads, at the worst times, from now until whenever he managed to crawl back into Evelyn's or Prowl's good graces. For the time being, that left Evelyn with Sunstreaker as her chauffeur, which was not working out that well.

She bolted back outside only to find her fears had been realized: a yellow Lamborghini surrounded by teenage boys.

_Oh, hell…_

"Hey!" She hurried forward, but the boys, three of them, seemed to not even notice her arrival. "Excuse me!"

One looked up from where he was bent nearly double, admiring the long lines of the car's hood. (Evelyn noticed with a little thrill of horror that his breath was fogging the sleek metal.)

_Oh. Oh, no. Please, no murder, no maiming – it's too damn early to fill out police reports._

Then he was touching the car.

"Nice ride!" The boy ran appreciative hands over the sleek yellow finish. "What is this, a _Lamborghini?_ In _Mason?_ What model? What year?"

_Cause of death: squished by psychotic sports car. News at five. Footage at eleven._

Evelyn smiled tightly, wishing (not for the first time) that the twins had chosen Oldsmobiles for their alt-modes.

"Excuse me," she said, hefting her purse. "If you don't mind..."

"A Countach, right? Dude, this is a classic!"

With no warning, the vehicle's engine let out a menacing growl, causing the student's examinations to pause as he stared wide-eyed at the hood. Evelyn took the opportunity to click her fingers under his nose until she had his attention.

"Sweetie… step away from the car before someone gets hurt."

* * *

"_Underdeveloped, smelly, stupid, _disgusting_—"_

Evelyn slumped lower in her seat, unwilling to even attempt to pull Sunstreaker out of his snit. He had been going steady for – she checked her watch – six minutes now, and he sounded perfectly able to go for another hour.

"—_slimy, freakish, squishy, _moronic_, fraggin' repulsive little—"_

"Turn right here," she prompted.

_I miss Sideswipe already._

The car took the turn a little to quickly, and Evelyn had to grab hold of the door to keep from being flung over onto the driver's seat. The engine snarled at the contact, and she sighed.

"Look, don't get peevish with me because you chose to pick the flashiest alt-form this side of a Ferrari."

The engine merely roared louder.

* * *

Sunstreaker did not so much drop her off at the employment office as eject her onto the curb, slowing long enough for her to topple out without breaking anything and jetting off with his door still open, slamming it shut as he went.

"Jerk!" she called after him, scrambling to hang on to purse, phone, paperwork, and dignity while onlookers stared and snickered.

As she stalked into the building, she gathered her temper long enough to suffer through yet another inquisition as to her education, skills, references, previous employment, and other miscellanea, but she was fuming by the time she exited to the street. She took an absurd kind o satisfaction from the gusts off steam her breath produced in the frigid air, and she exhaled long and slowly, imagining – for a moment – that she were a dragon and Sunstreaker a particularly flammable marshmallow.

However, there was no yellow Lamborghini awaiting her at the curb. Instead, a gray Datsun roared to life, jiggling on its tires at her approach.

She found herself grinning, and she hurried forward. The door – driver's side – popped open before she even reached for the handle, and she snorted a laugh, catching sight of a man further down the sidewalk, staring at her and the car with wide eyes.

She waved at him. "Automatic everything! Cool, huh?"

She slid into the already warm interior and felt as though things were suddenly looking up.

"Blue, you really need to work on the whole 'blending in' thing."

"_What? What did I do wrong?"_ The console screen blinked on, showing the mech's confused expression.

"Cars here don't open their doors for people or… or _bounce _the way you do." _Even though that's probably the cutest thing I've ever seen._ "You have to sit still and be quiet, no matter what."

"_Oh. Okay, Evy. I'll do better. Prowl's been trying to teach me, but I guess it hasn't really stuck in my code yet, huh?"_

"Don't worry too much. You have no idea how good it is to see you."

He beamed at her. _"It's nice to see you too. We've been doing so much patrolling since we got here! Sunstreaker said that he would patrol to the other end of the continent and back if he didn't have to touch a human ever again, and Prowl told him that if that were the case, Sunstreaker could just join Sideswipe on inclement weather patrol, so I had to come and pick you up since you would need a car to get around for the rest of the day, but I don't mind! We have to rendezvous with Prowl later on anyway, so I can go ahead and take you there after you're done running your errands."_

"Oh, I had forgotten about that." She frowned and then gave a mental shrug. "Well, I know you'll be much better company than Sunstreaker."

Bluestreak rumbled a laugh that thrummed through his interior. _"I can certainly try!"_

* * *

Evelyn needed to deliver her resume' to the central office of the community college (nearly forty-minutes away from Oak Grove, but oh, well…), but the nearest public parking was a fairly decent walk away. She found herself remembering her own reserved parking spot at her old job with fondness.

This lot was choked with cars, and they cruised up and down the aisles on search.

"_Oh, someone just pulled out!"_ Bluestreak's engine thrummed, and he darted off, well above the lot speed limit. Evelyn pressed back into her seat and reminded herself that the mech's all had arrays of sensors far beyond what she could comprehend, that she was perfectly safe, that Bluestreak would never…

_Cut off another car and nearly cause a horrific wreck._

"Bluestreak!"

The Datsun darted into the spot with a jaunty little rev, and Evelyn cringed low in the driver's seat as the truck of college boys honked and shouted abuse at her.

_Oh. Oh, dear._

"_What? What's wrong?"_

"Bluestreak…"

She dared a sheepish little wave of apology at the truck and was flipped off in return. The truck roared away, and she was left to level an unimpressed look at the console.

"Look, Bluestreak, you can't do stuff like that! You could have caused a wreck, cutting off someone like that."

"_No, I couldn't. Even if they had sped up, I still would have gotten by in time. You know I'd never put you in danger, Evy."_

"That's not the point, Blue. This was _their _spot. They were closer."

"_Oh."_ The engine's purr died to a sad little sputter. _"I'm sorry. I just knew you wanted a parking spot here."_

_Hello, Puppy Dog Look._

"It's okay. Just… try to be a little more careful, alright? Parking spots aren't that important."

"_Yes, Evy."_

She sighed and smiled and patted the steering wheel.

"Well, just sit here for a little bit while I drop these papers off. Then we can meet with Prowl. Okay?"

"_Okay."_

She could not help but pat the car on the roof as she got out and wave as she walked away.

_And I'm lecturing _him _about acting normal._

* * *

_Resumes dropped off: twenty-four._

_Job interviews: six._

_Job offers: zilch._

Evelyn sighed a sigh that seemed to come from the soles of her feet. The secretary had been nice enough, but 'Sorry, Mr. Barrister isn't in today, would you like to leave a message?' was not the reception she had been hoping for.

_I'm never going to be employed again._

The wind was chilly and the trees were bare skeletons, the entire scene speaking of barrenness. She mused darkly that it was an all-too-fitting metaphor for her bank account. If Cybertronians did not have alternate sources of fuel, she would have been unable to even drive anyway, incapable of affording the gas.

_Well, _she thought, attempting to cheer herself, _thank goodness for the Autobots, hey? Protecting the Earth, battling the Decepticons, and chauffeuring destitute linguistics professors – all in a day's work!_

She caught sight of Bluestreak's gleaming form and grinned, quickening her steps, but then she saw someone standing next to the Datsun… very close to him, in fact.

Very close.

She frowned, squinting, steps faltering.

A boy, old enough to be a student at the college. A truck, familiar, parked nearby, with several other boy's inside. Laughter, harsh and jeering.

Glint of metal in the boy's hand.

_He's not…_

Her eyes widened. And she was running.

"_Get away from him!"_

A loud _'oh, shit!' _came from the truck, and the engine roared as it was thrust into gear, gunning it out of the parking spot and away. The boy beside Bluestreak shouted after it, some threat. He had moved away from the car and into the aisle of the parking lot and flipped off the truck as it pulled onto the main road.

"Hey!" Evelyn was between the boy and the Datsun, all-too-aware of the jagged scratch snaking across one silver-gray door. The boy still had a key in his hand. He smirked over his shoulder at her and turned to leave.

"Don't you dare try and walk away," she growled.

The boy stopped and turned to face her. He grinned, broad and cocky, spreading his arms wide. "_Excuse _me. I thought you wanted me to get away."

"You're coming with me," she said, "to the campus police. Right now."

"Oh, yeah?" he jeered. "And who's gonna make me? You?"

With two long strides, she was within arms' reach of the teen, and with speed born of many scuffles with elder siblings, her hand lashed out… to pin the fleshy shell of the boy's ear firmly between the nails of her thumb and forefinger.

The resultant yowl of pain and anger nearly deafened her.

"You stupid… Ow! Bitch! Let go of me! Let go!"

She tightened her hold and gave a little _twist,_ replacing the cursing with a pained bellow as the teen found himself bent into an inverted U in a futile attempt to lessen the pressure on his ear.

She leaned down until they were nearly face-to-face, fury thrumming through her body like a thunderstorm.

"Let me make something abundantly clear," she said, her voice quiet and sweet as arsenic. "The ear is coming with me… whether you do or not."

* * *

Campus security was not amused with her handling of the situation, but she found that she cared very little. There were mentions of "reports being filed" and "assault" and "charges", and Evelyn stood and glared and thought about intergalactic military tacticians and saboteurs, and she thought, _Go ahead. I dare you. _

When the student started yelling about injuries and suing, she fixed him with such a dark look that he paused and stepped so that one of the campus police was between them before he continued.

"You can take it from here, I trust?" she asked, words clipped.

"Well, yes, but Miss Hughes, you have to understand, if the family decides to press charges—"

"You have my contact information."

She used the walk back across campus to calm her breathing and focus more on calm and serenity and less on strangulation and manslaughter. She had managed to achieve something vaguely resembling composure by the time she reached the parking lot, but a lot of that went straight out the window when she caught sight of the jagged scratch snaking across the vehicle's door.

It was just a scratch. It was _just a scratch,_ just paint – the Autobots were made of sterner stuff than to be truly injured by some human with a grudge –but it stood out starkly upon the pale gray metal, and her stomach churned at the very sight of it. The door unlocked as she neared, but it did not swing open to allow her entrance, merely waiting for her to pull it open herself. She rubbed the roof of the Datsun gently before sliding into the driver's seat.

"Oh, Blue," she sighed. "Why didn't you _do _anything?"

The door closed behind her, the engine purring to life, and the screen set at the middle of the dashboard blinked on to show the face of a very confused and unsettled mech.

"_You said to stay still and be quiet."_

"I didn't mean if anyone was trying to _hurt _you! Bluestreak…"

"_He didn't hurt me. It just startled me a bit."_

Evelyn found herself rendered utterly speechless. The simple sentence sounded obscene coming from the gentle young mech.

"Bluestreak…" she began, and then she did not know what to say. She jumped to a separate subject to buy time. "How long until we rendezvous with Prowl?"

"_About a quarter-joor."_

"Okay. Just enough to get you washed and waxed, huh?" She forced a smile onto her face when, illogically, she felt more like crying. "My treat."

* * *

**End ****Chapter Three  
**


	5. Lucky

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **mild cursing, mild gore

**Author Notes:** Visit my new blog, **Scriptophrenia** (dot-wordpress-dot-com) to see exclusive drabbles, my Letters to the World, writing articles, and more!

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Chapter Four**

* * *

_The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.  
_**– Tony Robbins**

* * *

Marty's Wash'n'Wax off of the main Mason City highway was a small, unassuming place known best for its constant support of the Mason City Owls, the college's softball team. The fact that Marty McClaren, the owner and namesake, was father to two of the players may have had something to do with this. Evelyn knew him from the one year that she had lost her mind and volunteered to help the team with their fundraisers.

The fact that she had retained her sanity after the three-month whirlwind of bake-sales, yard-sales, lock-ins, auctions, babysitting services, house-keeping services, lawn-tending services, and, naturally, car-washes, she owed in large part to Marty, who was even more go-get-'em than the softball girls, a hard thing to beat.

Bluestreak pulled into line at Evelyn's direction, behind an old red Chevy.

"Wait here, okay? I'll be right back."

"Okay, Evy."

There was an attendant conversing with the man in the Chevy, and Evelyn looked around. It seemed to be a quiet day at the car-wash, only herself and two other cars going through. The door to the office opened, heralded by the _bing-bong_ of an electronic bell, and a man stepped out.

"Miss Hughes?"

She could not help but smile. Marty McClaren, mid-fifties, was as tall and gangly as a stork, all elbows and knees, and he smiled broadly as she waved, and when he approached, he shook her hand and laughed a little.

"Well, good lord, I heard you'd gone and fallen off the Earth!"

"Something like that. Do you have time to give my friend here a little TLC?"

"What have we got...?" Mr. McClaren turned his gaze to Bluestreak. "Datsun Fairlady, hey? She's a beaut."

"_He_, actually."

"That so?" He grinned. "And does _he _have a name?"

Mr. McClaren was familiar with Evelyn's habit of naming her cars - her Taurus, Jinx, had been a semi-regular visitor.

"Bluestreak."

"I don't see a speck of blue on him."

"Inside joke."

"Right. Where'd you get something like a Fairlady anyway?"

"Long story. Basically, I'm doing some translation work for a company north of here. The owner has a massive car collection, and when he heard that I'd lost my car, he said I could 'exercise' his for him. I'm babysitting this guy and several others. He's, uh... he's the best to get around in, honestly."

"How so?"

_Less attitude. _

"Not as flashy."

"You make it sound so mysterious. A collection of cars from some rich businessman?"

"It's kind of embarrassing, actually."

"Do I dare ask what others you've got hidden away?"

"You'll probably see them all at some point. I'm sure they'll all fight for the chance at a wash."

The Chevy had been taken on through the wash by the attendant, and Marty glanced around.

"Well, I can take him through for you, if you like. Just me and Steve running it today."

"That'd be great. I just want the wash and wax – don't worry about anything under the hood."

"That I can do."

Mr. McClaren pulled open the Datsun's door and slid into the driver's seat, but then there was a pause, stretching out into one of those awkward moments where one person expects some action and the other is clueless as to what that might be. Mr. McClaren coughed softly.

"… do you have the key?"

_Oh._

"He's, ah... he's a custom," she said, scrambling after a fitting lie. "Automatic everything, practically. Just say, um… _engine on._"

Obediently, Bluestreak's engine revved, and Evelyn gave a sigh of relief.

McClaren's eyebrows hit his hairline. "That is something. Five-speed?"

"Automatic. Just… say, you know, _shift drive, shift reverse, shift park…_"

"It's got the shifter still."

"Yeah, but, um, that's for looks."

"Your businessman friend must be a piece of work to go this far on a car. Is that a DVD player in the dash?"

"GPS. Yeah, a piece of work. Right." She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. _You have no idea._

* * *

Inside the waiting room of Marty's Wash'n'Wax, there was a window to the car-wash. Evelyn figured it was the manly equivalent of watching the front of a clothes-washer for entertainment, but now she found it more like the window of a public nursery where parents could gather to check up on their children. As she watched the Datsun nose into the first section, water and suds spattering onto the hood, she idly wondered whether Bluestreak was ticklish.

(She also hoped that he remembered the 'sit still and be quiet' part of her instructions, because the last thing they needed was for him to drive himself out of the wash and park himself.)

Then, eyes fixed on the car, she pulled out her cell, scrolled down to one of the new numbers in her contact list (a string of gibberish that no more resembled a phone number than she resembled Ghengis Khan), and hit 'call'.

There was no time for the phone to even ring. By the time she had it to her ear, there was a voice on the other end.

_"What?"_

She sighed. "We'll work on phone etiquette later. Have you got a second?"

_"I'm stuck in the middle of cow-ville, patrolling roads that Decepticons would be too embarrassed to blow up, much less set tire on, and you ask if I have time?"_

"I'll take that as a 'yes'." She glanced around, taking note of the other two people in the room: one a man with his nose buried in a magazine, the other a young woman wearing headphones and listening to an iPod. She concentrated very hard on making sure her words came out in very quiet Cybertronian. "How easily can you hack a computer?"

The only response was silence, yet it still managed to sound smug.

"Right…" she breathed. "I need a favor."

"_Oh? Would this be the sort of favor worth a get-out-of-the-Pit-free card? Because that's exactly what this whole 'inclement weather' patrol thing is, and Prowl's not going to be the one to blink first. You know, I think he actually examines the weather and sends me _to _the storms? I was posted someplace called Lula __last night, and let me tell you, if the 'Cons have landed, that's exactly where they're _not _going to be."_

"Technically, the favor is for Bluestreak, and if you do it right, I'll go one better than talking to Prowl – I'll talk to Jazz."

"_I'm listening."_

"Can you pull up security footage from the Mason City College from today? There's a parking lot on the north end of campus where Blue took me."

"_On it." _

There was a brief pause. Bluestreak was hidden amongst the swirling blue masses of the rollers, only patches of gray metal here and there as evidence that there was even a car in the midst of the storm.

A harsh, chattering buzz emerged from her phone, a sound like a giant angry wasp.

When he spoke again, Sideswipe's voice was low and even, all evidence of joking vanished. _"What did you have in mind?"_

"Something simple. How many parking citations or speeding tickets do you think you can enter in before it looks suspicious?"

"_I thou__ght you humans liked everything on paper."_

"Everything's on computers nowadays."

"_I can do it, sure, but you're thinking small."_

She smiled grimly. "Sideswipe, no matter how much the mental image appeals to me, I'm not going to let you step on him."

"_No__, no, nothing that permanent. Just… well. Leave it to me."_

"You can't just step on _part _of him either, Sides. Or run him over. Or—"

"_I got it, yes, no maiming the squishy. I'll take care of everything. It's _me_, remember?"_

"I know, believe me."

"_I'__ll update you later."_

"Don't forget the meeting this afternoon."

"_Aw, bolts. Right, right, I'll be there."_

"Thanks, Sides."

"_No problem._"

She hung up and stood for a moment with the corner of the phone pressed to her lips, contemplating.

What sort of person had she become, to even think about _revenge?_ She thought of herself as a good person. Two years past, she would never have considered or condoned such a… a petty, underhanded thing.

Two years ago, she did not know the Autobots.

_They__'re thirty-foot metal giants, armed from feet to helm. It's not like they need my protection._

Only…

She closed her eyes, and the image seemed to hover before her: the teenager's smug grin, the key in his hand… the scratch, a jagged line against pale gray.

She sighed.

_When did my life get complicated?_

The Datsun was through the wash, presumably on to be hand-dried and waxed and polished to his spark's content. She turned away from the window, but her gaze caught on the next car nosing into the wash.

_What the__…?_

She stared. Never had such a conglomeration of mismatched parts been seen outside of a junkyard. Doors, hood, side-panels – all different colors, some scratched and dented, others nearly pristine. The car seemed to be the bastard child of at least eight other vehicles. It niggled at something in her memory.

"Miss Hughes?"

She registered several things before she turned. The voice was familiar, but not Mr. McClaren – male, adult.

She turned, frowning.

The man stood half a head taller than her, hair short and the color of copper. His expression was one of surprise and confusion.

"Yes?" she asked.

He grinned, a brief quirk at the corner of his mouth.

"I didn't think you'd remember me," he said. "Chris Stephens – I teach the automotives class at the high school. It was a long while ago, but you dropped off some papers for the English teachers…?"

The rising inflection turned the statement into a faint query. In Evelyn's mind, something went _click._

"Oh!" Then, for lack of anything better to say, she repeated it: "Oh. That's right – I didn't realize. I'm sorry." And then something else clicked, and she glanced over at the rolling patchwork of parts currently in the wash. "So that must be… Franken-vette, am I right? Or another project?"

And he smiled.

"Yeah, that's Frankie. We got him running last semester, and he's doing pretty good thus far. Uh… I saw you on the news a while back. Is everything… okay?"

"Oh. Yes. Well, pretty close. Kind of. It's a long story. But things are settling down." She gave a rueful little smile. "I'm job-hunting, actually. Not having a lot of luck."

"I would think you'd find something pretty easily. 'College professor' looks awful good on a resume, doesn't it?"

'_Disappeared without a trace__' doesn't._

"It's complicated."

He huffed a quiet 'huh' and said, "It's really weird that you should say that. The French teacher at the high school is going on maternity leave in the next couple weeks or so." He grinned at her. "And I'm pretty sure they're still on the lookout for a replacement. _Parlez_-_vous francais?_"

For a moment, the world seemed to pause. She felt an answering grin spreading over her face.

"_Ma__is oui!__"_

* * *

**End Chapter Four**

* * *

**A/N: **Visit my new blog, **Scriptophrenia** (dot-wordpress-dot-com) to see exclusive drabbles with every update notice! Current series: "Things the Autobots Knew That Evelyn Did Not." Already posted: Ratchet, Sideswipe. Tonight's post: Jazz.


	6. SS: Duo

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **mild cursing, mild gore

**Author Notes:** Ah, and here we have one of the new features of the Sparkbearer Saga – a peek into the mind of Sideswipe. This will become more important to the plot later on. You'll see.

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Chapter Five: Interlude**

* * *

_A true friend is one soul in two bodies.__  
_**- Aristotle**

* * *

Fifteen parking citations, eight speeding tickets, two failed classes, three maxed-out credit cards, one charge of "indecent exposure" (whatever the frag that was), and one jury-duty summons later, Sideswipe felt moderately successful in Mission: No Stepping On The Squishy. Over the bond, he had felt Sunstreaker observe with mild interest as he had rummaged through the primitive information system and tweaked files here and added data there… Most of the offenses made little sense to him, but he felt no compunction about lifting data from similar files to suit his needs. Lots of copy-and-paste, as the humans would call it.

Sunstreaker had suggested something called "manslaughter." Sideswipe thought this probably reflected well of his brother's current mood, but even to a Cybertronian, that word sounded too ominous to be used lightly.

He held no illusions that Prowl would approve of his actions. He counted on three things to save him from the tactician's wrath: one, the fact that he had Evelyn's OK; two, that he had restrained himself to non-physical retribution; and three, it was _Bluestreak._ Between them, Prowl and Jazz could almost pass as a human creator-unit for the rookie, and it caused him no small amount of amusement to ponder which would fill which gender role.

Somewhere amidst this convoluted train of thought, Sunstreaker 'thwapped' him through the bond. _(Shut up.)_

_(Stop listening.)_

_(Stop thinking.)f_

_(After you – oh, wait. Too late.)_

There came a second 'thwap', nowhere near as gentle as the first, and Sideswipe reciprocated, until, even speeding down one of the wide human thoroughfares, the two brothers lost themselves in a slap-fight that swiftly degenerated into a bizarre and dangerous game of road-tag.

Engine roaring, wind rushing past all around him, the red Lamborghini danced amid the crawling-slow human traffic, circling his yellow twin, separating and rejoining, speeding and slowing, the pair losing themselves in play.

_It's good to be back, _he thought.

* * *

The warehouse resided deep within a nearly abandoned industrial district adjacent to Oak Grove's downtown. Sideswipe still wasn't clear on how Jazz had 'purchased' it, but he knew that the deed was now registered under a Mr. P. Rowl. As he pulled past the chain-link fence and around to the back, he broadcast the brief signal that would activate the garage doors, allowing himself and Sunstreaker to enter.

They barely waited for the door to close before they transformed.

"Honey, we're ho-o-o-ome!"

The warehouse stretched a good distance to either side of the garage door entrance. At one end were more garage-style doors at the loading bay, opening onto a drop-off where trucks could park to receive cargo. At the other end, a scattered jumble of tires, various sizes and styles, resided in the corner, and beside them, tiny human-sized doors led into a two-story office section, far too small to be of any use to a Cybertronian.

At the center of the floor, amidst the rows of support poles, a massive cargo container gleamed in the faint sunlight that filtered through the dirty skylights. Seated atop this, Evelyn waved a greeting, and standing near her, Prowl flicked them the briefest of glances before returning his attention to the femme.

"And you think this will be a satisfactory arrangement?" the tactician was saying.

"It'll be great. If you guys don't mind driving me there each morning."

Sideswipe resisted the urge to pout. _(I think we're being ignored.)_

_(You, Sideswipe. _You_ are being ignored.)_

"What arrangement?" he asked, moseying nearer.

And Evelyn turned to him with one of those bright, beaming smiles – the kind that made his faceplate ache.

"I might have a job lined up," she said. "I've got an interview on Monday – French teacher at a high school."

"Oh." That didn't sound nearly as exciting as she was making it out to be. "Goody."

She wriggled a little on her seat – a motion that made Prowl half-reach in preparation to catch her should she tip off her perch – and made a squeaky noise.

"Oooh, I can't wait!"

"Um… congrats?"

Sideswipe exchanged a glance with Prowl. For the first time since he had woken, he found himself in accord with the white mech: _I don't know. Just go with it._

"All in all," she said, "it was a pretty good day." And she _looked _at Sideswipe – very quickly, but with a significant arch to her eyebrows, and _since when did I ever pay any attention to _eyebrows_…?_ "Nothing too much out of the ordinary."

Sunstreaker had wandered off to poke around in the distant corners of the room, his thoughts coming over the bond as a muted grumble of _filthy _and _dusty _and _Primus, look at the rust_, but his attention snapped to the present immediately at that comment – Sideswipe could feel it in his circuits like the first level of battle-programming coming online.

_(What?) _asked Sunstreaker.

And Sideswipe responded with _(Huh.)_

But never let it be said that he was anything but adaptable, because he responded, grinning, "Alien cars and energon and Decepticons, oh, my."

"Oh, my _God, _you watched _The Wizard of Oz?"_ The look upon the femme's face was somewhere between incredulous and delighted, and he rumbled a laugh.

"Got to do something wandering around in cow-ville. YouTube will save your sanity."

"I figured you'd go for _War of the Worlds _or something."

"Evy, we're living the War of the Worlds. Why would we watch it for entertainment?"

She giggled. "Point."

Jazz and Bluestreak registered on his sensor net before the garage door rattled upward, but when the door closed behind them, Bluestreak was the only one to transform.

"Hey! Sorry that took so long, Prowl, but it these forms just aren't meant to carry crates this size, and then once I had Jazz loaded, he couldn't help with any of the others, and it's going to take several more trips. Did Mirage and Hound leave already? Maybe they can fit more in Hound, since he doesn't have a roof, but I don't know if that would mess with his hologram driver, and it would look pretty weird if a car was driving itself. At least we have really dark windows so no one can see in, but still…"

Sunstreaker eyed the gunner with a suspicious glower, and he returned to stand beside Sideswipe. A low growl vibrated along the bond.

_(What's with you?) _asked Sideswipe.

_(He's _clean,) said Sunstreaker.

Sideswipe looked again and had to agree. The gunner's armor gleamed with the unmistakeable sheen of the freshly waxed.

_(If you were nicer, maybe Evelyn would take _you _through the wash.)_

His brother merely snarled in reply.

Jazz had popped open his doors, revealing an interior packed with smaller crates bearing Cybertronian lettering.

"Little help?" asked the saboteur.

Prowl walked over to help Bluestreak unload the packages from the Porsche's interior, and Sideswipe sidled over to the cargo container. He poked the femme in the side, gently, with one finger, and she slapped at him in response.

"Hey!"

"You didn't tell him?" he asked. He kept his voice carefully low, and she responded in kind.

"What? Of course not. It's _Prowl._"

"Huh." His CPU flickered through various explanations for this and came up short. "I thought you'd tell him. Maternal, you know."

"No." She gave him one of those Looks – the kind that meant he was being extremely, perplexingly stupid, and she was not certain how to reply. "I am going to tell _Jazz _and let _him _tell Prowl. And by that time, I will be safely at home and nowhere nearby to be implicated if that stupid little ass is run over by a black and white police Datsun."

Something in Sideswipe's very spark told him that he and the little femme were going to get along fabulously.

And across the bond, very, very quietly, he felt Sunstreaker's _(I told you so.)_

* * *

**End Chapter Five: Interlude**

* * *

A/N: Don't forget to visit Scriptophrenia (dot-Wordpress-dot-com) for the bonus drabble. Tonight's character: Sunstreaker. You can also subscribe to the blog through RSS or to my Twitter account (Scriptophrenia) to receive notices when I post. Cheers!


	7. Linguist

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **mild cursing, mild gore

**Author Notes:** A brief chapter, but we move slowly, slowly forward.

Don't worry. Things will start popping soon. ;3

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Chapter Six**

* * *

_**Daniel Jackson: **__We have to go in disguise; pretend to be foreigners. __**  
**__**Jack O'Neill: **__How do we do that? __**  
**__**Daniel Jackson: **__Well, I speak 23 languages, Jack. Pick one.__  
_**- Stargate SG-1**

* * *

The principle of Mason City High School wore a bow-tie, and Evelyn decided immediately that she was going to like him.

He was short but not stocky, well into his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair that grew in an even strip around the back of his head, ear-to-ear. The top of his skull was shiny to the point of reflecting the fluorescent strips overhead, and as he flipped through her paperwork, it was with quick, efficient motions that put her in mind of a bird.

His name was Phil Webster, as declared by the brass name plaque at the edge of his desk, so he had pretty much been doomed to a career in education.

"You have an impressive resume, Miss Hughes, but I do have some questions as to your previous employers."

_Here it comes._

'_Why, Miss Hughes, did you disappear off the face of the earth for over a year?'_

'_Well, you see, sir, I was kidnapped by aliens.'_

'_That's no excuse for not filing for a leave of absence.'_

And then there would be padded rooms and long-sleeved white jackets and daily bed checks and _'Now, Evelyn, tell me about your mother...__'_

"Do you really expect me to believe that you are fluent in nine languages?"

"… oh."

_That's not the way the script usually goes._

_And it's technically _ten _languages now, even if that's not anything I can brag about._

She supposed that was only to be expected when one wrote one's resume at one in the morning, fueled on caffeine and desperation.

Webster was peering at her, frowning, and she booted her brain back into gear.

"I'm fluent in eight," she said at last, "and I'm… decent… in two more."

"That's not the sort of accomplishment that you need to exaggerate," he said. "Eight is impressive enough."

"I used to work in the student employment office when I was in school." She smiled sheepishly. "One of the first things we learned was to list any skill, no matter how minor. Old habits die hard."

"Would you mind if I test you?"

"Not at all."

He reached for a separate pile of papers on the corner of his desk, pulling out two sheets.

"When you emailed me your resume, I was shocked to say the least. I printed out a quiz of sorts. I have the answer sheet, and you… read these."

He handed her one sheet and leaned back in his chair, eyes flicking between her expression and his own sheet. He waited.

_Okay, girl, just like riding a bike._

She scanned the sheet. There were nine short paragraphs, each in a different language. She grinned, and she began to translate.

Spanish – a soap-opera summary, easy enough. French – a recipe for chocolate croissants. Latin – an excerpt from the _Iliad. _Russian – a newspaper article. Japanese – a short poem. German…

Webster's eyes were wide, and he sat in stunned silence as Evelyn paused, frowning at the next sentence.

"I'm assuming you Googled these," she said.

"My daughter did, actually," he said faintly.

"What, ah… what did you think the German one was supposed to be?"

"Th-the summary says 'novel excerpt.'"

She laughed and said, "Romance novel, actually."

And she passed the paper back to him. He took it silently, a faint blush rising in his cheeks, and he put the papers away in a drawer, clearing his throat.

"Well," he said at last. Then, "Well, well. That is certainly impressive."

When he said nothing more, she replied, "Thank you."

"Yes. Very impressive. I believe our Mrs. Norris only knew English and French. It's a pity, too, since we once had quite the Spanish program here, but the teacher passed away some years back."

"I wouldn't mind teaching more than one class," she offered, only too willing to sweeten the deal. (His eyes still occasionally darted to the drawer that held the 'quiz' papers.) "And I've worked with extracurricular activities before. Is there a French club, or any language clubs?"

"No, no, I'm afraid not. Mrs. Norris is just recently out of school, you understand, and married shortly after that, and now with the pregnancy… She never had much free time to work with. It's a wonderful idea, of course."

"I'd be more than willing. Spanish, French, Japanese… Latin? We could have an extracurricular study group…"

A voice at the back of her mind was screeching, _Are you insane?_

"You make a convincing argument." The older man quirked a smile at her, his coloring returning to normal. The expression was there and gone in the blink of an eye. He picked up her resume once more, shuffling the papers around again and peered at them.

"Mr. Ellis from the college didn't have much to say. He did tell me that you were good at your job, but I sensed there was some sort of turbulence to result in your departure. Mr. Rowl, on the other hand, was a completely different story."

"Excuse me?" she said.

"Your current employer, Mr. Rowl – am I pronouncing it correctly? I understand that you will still want to work for him on a part-time basis, but I don't see why that should affect your work here, especially if you are everything that he says." He frowned, glanced down at the paper, and said, "There's not a first name, though. Do you know what the P stands for, by any chance? He never said."

Evelyn's brain shorted. Several synapses flickered, axons attempting to rouse their companion dendrons, but it took several moments before everything jump-started and her neurons resumed firing as they should.

"... I really don't," she replied, her voice faint. "It's never come up."

She resolved then and there to make certain any important documentation was all delivered in hard-copy form rather than through e-mail.

_Unless you want thirty-foot alien warriors nosing through your business,_ she thought.

_Which does have its perks..._

This was the first interview since her return that the dreaded _'And you vanished for a year__… why?' _interrogation had not come up. For that, she might have to take a certain Datsun for a wash and wax.

Within fifteen minutes, she walked out of the office beaming, a happily employed woman.

And if she paused in one of the deserted hallways to do a quick happy dance… Well, that was no one's business but her own.

* * *

In the parking lot, two Datsun Fairlady Zs sat side-by-side in the guest parking spots. One gleamed a brilliant gunmetal gray while the other bore all the trappings of a police vehicle - decals, colors, lights, and ram-guard - like two brothers just basking in each other's company.

She ran one hand along the hood of the gray car as she passed, moving to stand beside the black and white, resting her hips back against its side and crossing her arms.

"Mr. Rowl, I presume?"

The car made no motion, no noise. The metal at her back was warm, though, belying the winter chill in the air - the mechs were always warm, even if their engines were running so silent that no human could hear them.

She huffed a quiet laugh, pushed away from the car, and patted it gently.

"Thank you," she murmured.

* * *

**End Chapter Six**

* * *

**A/N:** Today's special Scriptophrenia drabble: Prowl!

Also, please visit my post 'We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming…' I find myself in need of some assistance.


	8. Normal

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **mild cursing, mild gore

**Author Notes:** The players are in place. The dominoes have been stacked. Evelyn's life has achieved a kind of bizarre normalcy – I hope she enjoyed it while it lasted.

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Chapter Seven**

* * *

_What's normal anyways__**?  
**_**- Mrs. Gump, ****Forrest Gump**

* * *

January passed into February, frigid stillness giving away to blustery winds which in turn grew into March thunderstorms that seemed determined to wash Georgia straight into the Atlantic. Still lacking the funds necessary to move into an apartment of her own, Evelyn remained with her parents. Monday through Friday, she commuted from Oak Grove to Mason City with her chauffeur of the day, usually Bluestreak, and somewhere along the way, life became… normal.

That's not to say that things weren't weird – it was just that weird _was _normal.

Like having to go out during her lunch break to chat with her car (so he wouldn't be lonely). Like getting _caught_ chatting with her car. Like lying to her employer's face about the therapeutic benefits of conversing with inanimate objects as a stress-reliever.

Or resigning herself to frequent intercom calls of "Would the owner of the yellow… _what, really? You're lying. Seriously? Uh_… the owner of the yellow _Lamborghini _please report to the parking lot – your alarm is going off. Thank you."

Her cell phone had no set ringtone anymore. Depending on certain callers' moods, tastes, and recently watched YouTube videos, the little device could at any moment blare out anything from Star Wars to Daft Punk to My Little Pony (_Really, Jazz?)_ or worse. She came to regard it as a kind of grenade – non-violent, but liable to go off at the worst possible time. She still had not quite forgiven Sideswipe for _Barbie Girl_ during the PTA meeting.

It was not unheard of for her to get lost in parking lots now because her car _would not stay._ Either it would swap spaces in a fit of boredom, or she would leave a Lamborghini and come back to find a Datsun awaiting her.

But there were good days.

She took Hound to a drive-through zoo one day. The air had been cold, but the sun warmed her, and the sensation of the Jeep bouncing on his tires at every new animal had made the trip more than worthwhile. Later, Hound had shown the other mechs the kinds of animals he had seen by crafting holograms. Evelyn had sat atop his foot, surrounded by zebras and antelope and ponies and deer and wolves and lions, as many as the mech's projector could handle. Jazz in particular had enjoyed the chimpanzee, especially when it had attached itself to the doorwings of a certain white Datsun.

Later, when Hound had gifted her with a CD containing image captures of the get-together, she decided that, oddly enough, weird wasn't normal. It was _better._

* * *

"Maybe they forgot?"

"_Oh, please."_

"Well, how do you know?"

The ride from Mason City to Oak grove took nearly forty minutes – ample time for conversation. Evelyn glanced at the viewscreen in the vehicle's center console, and the image of Sideswipe fixed her with a thoroughly unimpressed look.

"'_Cons aren't going to forget about an unclaimed energon mine like this place. Trust me."_

"It's been months."

"_The war__'s been going on since before this planet formed. A _month _isn't going to make much of a difference." _The Lamborghini's engine growled. _"Your whole life-cycle probably wouldn__'t make a difference."_

Evelyn glared at him. When he ignored her, she folded her arms across her chest and turned her attention to the world sliding by outside her window – bleak, bare trees, brown grass, pale sky. She could not wait for spring.

"Maybe Mirage can take me to work tomorrow," she said.

The engine sputtered, the car slowing for a moment before resuming speed. _"What?__"_

"Hey, he can turn invisible. _He _can probably speed – make the trip in half the time without worrying about traffic tickets."

"… _I don't think he'd see it that way."_

"Probably not." She rarely saw the blue and white mech. He was so quiet that even when he was visible he seemed to fade into the background, and he barely spoke – certainly not to her. "I don't think he likes me."

"_I don__'t think he likes anyone."_

"You're one to talk. You share headspace with _Sunstreaker._"

"_Exactly. I know what I__'m talking about."_

* * *

The smell of French fries caught her attention first – the person standing in front of her desk came a close second.

"Hey." Christopher Stephens wiggled the paper bag, spreading the delicious aroma of McDonald's further through the air. "Thought you could use a break."

She blinked stupidly for a moment before glancing at the clock.

_Good grief, six o'clock? _She counted herself lucky that her car of the day happened to be a very laid-back and accommodating Porsche.

"Yikes," she said. Atop her desk, mounds of tests seemed to multiply before her eyes, slashes of red ink standing out on the white paper like wounds. "I didn't realize."

"Most of us end our work-days around four or five, you know." He slid one stack of papers out of the way, setting the bag in its place. "You're going to make us look bad."

"So you decide to bribe me with food?"

"Yup."

She grinned, and he seemed to take that as an invitation. Within moments, he had pulled up a chair across from her and laid out cheeseburgers and french-fries and napkins and packets of ketchup. He peered at the spread for a moment, his expression perturbed.

"I guess it's too late to ask whether you're a vegetarian."

"At this point, I could eat a cow on the hoof."

"Oh. Good."

The conversation drifted from place to place, relaxed and casual. The automotives class was still finishing up Franken-vette, adding the final touches that would make him a true road-worthy vehicle and less of an automotive eyesore. (None of the mechs would approach that section of the school anymore. Upon first sighting the patchwork vehicle, Sunstreaker had thrown himself into reverse so quickly that Evelyn's spine had ached for a week.)

Evelyn's class was all that a high-school Spanish course could hope to be – which was to say, so much a step down from teaching a college course that she was, on multiple occasions, nearly overcome with the desire to beat herself senseless with the _Manual de Gramitica_. Early morning coffee in the teacher's lounge was not so much a meeting of intellectual conversation but more a compare and contrast of the worst students in the school.

(Evelyn still felt she should have won when, upon mentioning Miguel de Cervantes, one sparkling gem of a student had asked her, "Hey, ain't he a rapper?")

After the French fries but only halfway through her burger, her phone rang.

She did not answer it at first because, honestly, she did not think it was her phone. It was ringing, just a plain, regular, boring, _normal _ringtone, not the Ninja Turtle song or the theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. When she realized, a feeling of wrongness settled in her stomach and began to grow, and she fumbled for her purse.

"Hello?"

"_Evy.__" _Jazz. _"__Take the door beside the gym when ya leave today, 'kay?"_

"Um." She glanced at her dinner companion. Christopher had turned his attention to one of the inspirational posters lining the room's walls, granting her some semblance of privacy. She made an effort to ensure that she was speaking English instead of Cybertronian. "Sure, I guess. Is something wrong?"

"_You__'ll be fine. We'll talk later."_

And he hung up.

She sat for a long moment, staring down at the phone. When she looked up, Christopher was watching her.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

"… I don't know."

* * *

The back parking lot was illuminated by a lone telephone-pole light, buzzing and flickering and tinting everything yellow-orange. There were no cars to be seen – Porsches, Datsuns, Lamborghinis, or Jeeps – and she stood in the open doorway, heart speeding with uncertainty.

Her ears were ringing, though, and she had learned to pay attention to that.

"Mirage?" she whispered.

She felt foolish, because she had to be wrong. The blue and white mech wanted nothing to do with her, and he certainly had better things to do than hang out in abandoned school parking lots.

But then something flickered at the corner of her vision, close beside the dumpsters – W_here no one ever walks, and where no cars would park, _she thought. – and she hurried over.

The doorway appeared out of nothingness, a hole in the air that revealed a low-set seat and a dashboard bereft of any sort of buttons or controls. She slid inside, and the door closed silently behind her. With equal silence, the car began to move, so swiftly and smoothly that it felt as though they were gliding, and watching the surrounding buildings go past, she realized just how fast they were moving.

_Definitely not a believer in speed limits._

"Mirage?"

The console remained dark, but the mech spoke, his voice emerging from everywhere around her, quiet and clear.

"_Yes?__"_

"Is everything okay?"

"_I doubt that _everything _is well," _he said. _"But there is nothing for you to concern yourself over.__"_

She frowned at that.

"But what's going on?"

"_Prowl assigned me to return you to your dwelling.__"_

"I figured _that_. Where are the others?"

"_Patrolling, most likely. I did not ask.__"_

She sighed.

Even though it took half as much time as usual, the drive from Mason City to Oak Grove was one of the longest of her life.

* * *

Mirage dropped her off at her parents' driveway, and judging by the ringing of her ears, he did wait until she reached the house before he left – or perhaps he merely moved to another nearby location to take up guard-dog duty.

She still felt jittery and unsettled as she entered the near-smothering warmth of the old house. It took her two tries to get her coat hung on the proper hook, and then she dropped her scarf before she managed to get it stowed away properly. She wondered whether she should call one of the other mechs, just to check in.

_They're keeping secrets again, _she thought, and a tiny voice in the back of her head sang, _It's for your own good! It's for your own good!_

The television was on, her father settled into his favorite chair, engrossed in the news. Her mother was in the kitchen, stirring and chopping what Evelyn hoped were the fixings for spaghetti and garlic bread. They both called out greetings as they heard her come in.

Evelyn on her way to her room to change from her work clothes when her heart seemed to freeze in her chest, and she backtracked swiftly to stand behind her father's recliner and watch the news broadcast.

"—_FAA is at a loss to explain the strange occ__urrences, and more sightings continue to crop up around the globe—"_

Blurred footage of various, oddly-colored military planes flickered across the screen.

"—_these 'Phantom Jets' have been labeled as—"_

Evelyn's eyes locked with horror upon the purple sigil boldly emblazoned upon their wings.

* * *

**End Chapter Seven**

* * *

**Miguel de Cervantes – **author of _Don Quixote_

* * *

A/N: Today's special Scriptophrenia drabble: a brief Evelyn slice-of-life.


	9. Jets

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **mild cursing, mild gore

**Author Notes:** Who are those rainbow-colored jets, anyway…?

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Chapter Eight**

* * *

_It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.  
_**- R.E.M.**

* * *

_Three jets sighted over the Red Sea. Suspected F-15 Eagles. Abnormal coloring. Vanished without a trace._

* * *

"_Seekers,__"_ said Jazz, his voice somber, lacking much of its usual drawl.

Even ensconced in the plush seat with the heater running full blast – arguably the safest place she could possibly be, _inside _a giant warrior mech, – Evelyn still felt cold.

"Bluestreak and Hound talked about those," she said. "Bluestreak was…" _Worried? Freaked? Terrified? Oh, god._

"_Blue__'s got more reason to hate Seekers than most mechs. But that's not my story to tell."_

"They called them elite."

"_Yeah." _He paused, then, "_Autobots and Decepticons weren't always fightin', you know. Used to be, we were all one group. There were the scientists, the creators, the scholars… and there were the warriors. There are a bunch of histories on how the war first started, but it was all energon. Cybertron only had so much to mine, you see? _

"_When the energon started runnin' low, one group wanted to barter, to find tradin' partners an' buy what we needed. Lotta the warriors didn't see it that way – they wanted to take what they needed, do whatever it took to keep the planet goin'. Vorns later, you have the 'Bots and the 'Cons. You've gotta understand, 'Cons are _made_ for fightin'. We've adapted, upgraded, researched new weapons, but… when it comes down to it, most 'Bots just don't have that base code for battle."_

"But… Sunstreaker?" she asked. "Sideswipe?"

"_Files say they were custom ordered __– they were built to fight. But they were built by Autobot engineers." _There was another pause. _"Seekers__… They're the core of the 'Con forces. They're fast, and they're powerful. They come in threes – Trines. They're bad news, Evy. Best thing we can do for now is lie low and see what they do."_

* * *

_Three jets sighted over Egypt. Local military unable to make contact. No recognizable insignia. Vanished without a trace. _

* * *

"Geeze, Evy, again?"

Evelyn jerked, nearly levitating off the couch in fright before she registered her father's presence in the doorway. She placed one hand over her heart as though to still its erratic pounding, and she sighed.

"Good grief, daddy, don't _do _that."

"Evy, if you didn't hear the screen door slam, then there's nothing else I can do." He sat down beside her and looked at the television. CNN, in all it's gaudy red glory, scrolled across the screen. _Phantom Jets! _one headline declared. _Rogue Aircraft! Government Cover-up? _"You're still watching that?"

"Yeah."

"They're just recycling the same lines over and over, you know. It's what they do."

"I know."

He sighed. Leaning over, he kissed the side of her head, hugging her briefly.

"Don't sit here too long. It'll rot your brain."

"Yes, dad."

* * *

_Three jets sighted over Iran. Abnormal coloring. Maneuvering abilities beyond the norm. Hailed by Iranian military. No response. Vanished without a trace._

* * *

"They're not coming over here," said Sideswipe, systems rumbling in a constant growl.

Seated within Jazz (parked in his alt-mode), Evelyn looked out and up at the red warrior. From Jazz's speakers came the latest report on the so-called 'Phantom Jets.'

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Jazz answered. _"Fuel. It all comes down to fuel. They__'ll stay where there's energy and plenty of it, pickin' off what they can, scoutin' targets."_

"But you guys use energon."

"_Ain__'t that hard, changing yer kind of fuels into energon. If they get a processin' plant set up, they'll dig in like a retro-rat in a heatin' vent."_

Across the room, Sunstreaker snarled, a sound that reverberated through the warehouse like thunder. His optics blazed pale in the near-shadows.

"And no way to get at them," murmured Sideswipe.

* * *

_Three jets sighted over Pakistan. Attacked and destroyed Mirage 5 jets on a training flight. US involvement rumored. Vanished without a trace._

* * *

"It's crazy, huh?" Chris braced one hand on her desk as he leaned in for a better look at the computer screen. The latest news updates – if 'latest rumors' could be called 'updates' – scrolled across the screen. Pictures of the Phantom Jets, blurry and pixelated, decorated the page, blue and purple and red and white. "The guerrilla version of the clown car."

"That's not funny," she said.

"No. No, I guess not."

Then the bell rang, and it was back to work.

* * *

_Three jets sighted over Syria. Military base destroyed. Eighty dead, over a hundred injured or missing. Rumors of experimental weaponry. US denies involvement. Vanished without a trace._

* * *

"There's got to be something you can do!"

Prowl's expression did not change.

"Evelyn, we are literally halfway around your planet, and none of us are flight-capable. The shuttle is meant for emergency evacuation only – it is not meant for battle, certainly not against Seekers. There is nothing that we can do."

"They're _killing _people!"

The rest of the mechs stood around in various attitudes of interest. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the frosted-glass windows, turning swirls of dust into pillars of gold and painting the Cybertronians as varied shapes of amber and black, punctuated by glowing blue eyes. None of them moved, the only sign of life the constant rumbling of their systems.

Prowl vented a quiet sigh. "Evelyn…"

"No. No, that can't be it. You can't just stand here and say 'oh, well, too bad' while _giant alien robots _are _blowing things up _on my planet!"

"Mechs," grumbled Sideswipe.

"You!" She whirled, jabbing one finger at the hulking shadow that was the red warrior. "This is all your fault in the first place, so if you're not going to help, then shut the hell up."

Sideswipe jerked back a little, his engine giving a startled rev. His optics narrowed, but he said nothing.

* * *

_Three jets sighted over Turkey. Two military bases destroyed. Local village burned to the ground. _

_Over two-hundred deaths estimated. _

_Vanished without a trace._

* * *

Ten days. Ten days since the first sighting, and yet again, she found herself in bed, staring into the blue-black darkness of her bedroom and waiting for sleep that would not come.

_It's getting worse, _she thought.

Countries were at each other's throats… but more than that, they were beginning to bond together, looking toward the United States. Experimental technology? Military planes that could hit and run and vanish? What country could accomplish that?

_Everything is going to hell, and I'm the only one who understands _why.

What could she do? Call up the White House? _"By the way, Mr. President, there ar__e aliens that can transform into jets, and they're here to strip-mine our planet. Oh, and my car is actually another alien, but it's okay. He's one of the _good guys."

_Right. Just before the Secret Service tosses me in a cell at Area 51 and the Air Force is ordered to vaporize any Lambo, Jeep, Porsche, or Datsun that shows its chassis._

The only ones that could possibly fight back were the mechs stuck here, babysitting her and her 'weird energy signature.'

She looked toward her bedside table… at her cell phone, a dark smudge barely visible in the faint glow of her alarm clock.

_This is a very bad idea, _she thought.

The night seemed to pause around her.

_Very bad. Horrible, in fact._

Feeling as though she were moving through some kind of dream, she rolled over, reaching out and sliding her fingers around the plastic case. She brought it close to her face, unlocking the keys by feel and squinting in the blinding glare as the screen came on.

_Insane._

She pulled up her contact list and scrolled down to the M's.

_Worst idea ever._

_Oh, God._

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and hit _Send._

* * *

**End Chapter Eight**

* * *

**A/N: **Tonight's drabble – Evelyn, Ratchet, and cursing.

… yeah.


	10. Plan

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **mild cursing, mild gore

**Author Notes:** Bad idea, Evy. Bad, bad, bad idea…

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Chapter Nine**

* * *

_**Dib: **__Now what, Zim? What's your next plan?_

_**Zim: **__Let's run screaming._

**- Invader Zim**

* * *

"_I still fail to understand why it was necessary that I accompany you.__"_

Evelyn hunkered lower in the strangely narrow seat, looking everywhere except at the console screen – at the storm-gray sky, at the passing billboards, at the trees skimming past outside the window, punctuated by brightly colored blurs as they swept by the snail-slow cars clogging the interstate. The mech was so adept at maneuvering that he very rarely had to brake, able to find a path through even the most complicated obstacles.

"You're quiet," she replied.

"_As is Prowl.__"_

"Not as quiet as you."

It was odd, to be seated so low in a car – a lone seat with an odd-shaped steering wheel before her and a glass canopy over and around her head. She felt as though she had absconded with a go-cart from some miniature golf course.

A moment passed in silence – perfect silence, unmarred by the sound of an engine or by the rushing of wind outside or the roar of traffic. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears and swallowed heavily.

"_Your pump rate has risen again.__"_

"Stress. I told you."

"_And you think this__… 'get-away' will help?"_

She smiled, a weak, tremulous expression. "Sometimes, humans just have to get away from everything for a while, all the hustle and bustle and noise." She took a deep breath, adding, "I appreciate you doing this. I know there are other things you'd rather do than drive me to the middle of nowhere to let me relax."

"_Jazz is covering my __route. What else is there for me to do?"_

The mech's voice was, as ever, perfectly polite and absolutely impersonal. Normally, she felt safe riding in one of the mechs, warm and secure. Now, she just felt lonely and cold.

_Of course, _she thought, _that might be because I'm lying through my teeth to a mech who has only ever helped me. _

_This is a horrible idea._

* * *

_The mechs did not know much about humans. She knew this and accepted it, and now she took advantage of it._

"_It's all the news about those jets," she said, cradling the cell phone to her ear. "It's… stressful. And I've been so busy, with so much going on, I just really… really need to get away."_

"Away where?"

"_Away from the city. From other people__. Sometimes humans can get stressed, and they just have to get away from everything and… breathe. I know it's an imposition, but… please?"_

"You still have not said where you wish to go."

"_As far away from cities and houses and people that you ca__n take me by driving. The middle of nowhere. No cars, no buildings, and no people, for as far around as possible, so it'll be quiet. Can you find a place like that?"_

"It would not be difficult."

"_I__…" She paused, swallowing, her tongue seeming too large for her mouth. "If you don't mind, then I would really appreciate it," she whispered._

"I will meet you at the road at dawn."

* * *

The mech took her deep into Chattahoochee National Forest, following Old Highway 76 and then turning onto a side road… and then onto another side road and another, deeper and deeper into the wilderness. The trees pressed closer against the road, as though resentful of the intrusion, and the asphalt changed from smooth and broad to pitted and narrow. The mech slowed his pace drastically, sometimes having to pull off to the side to allow another vehicle to go by. The occasional gust of wind would send leaves and twigs raining down upon the mech's chassis. After what seemed to be hours of driving, they came to a halt mere meters away from where the paved road ended, changing to a gravel and dirt track that wound off into the trees.

"_Is this suitable?__"_

She clenched her fists in her lap until her knuckles showed bone-white. Her heart seemed to beat too fast and not fast enough all at once, and the air was thick and hard to breathe.

"_Evelyn?"_

"Yes," she said quietly, her voice hoarse. "How far are we…?"

"_The nearest human structure is eight miles to the south. We are fifteen miles from the nearest highway."_

_Eight miles, _she thought. _That's all?_

She could see humanity like a giant anthill, little creatures toiling away in endless rushing movement, packed so close together that they climbed on top of one another as they went about their days.

_Eight miles._

She pressed one hand to the glass covering above her, and it slid out of the way, allowing her to climb out and stand on legs that felt quivery and untrustworthy. She walked further down the road until she was at the brink where asphalt crumbled away into pale gravel and red-hued dirt. The road was obviously rarely used. Sticks and dried leaves coated it like dreary confetti with no traffic to swipe them out of the way.

She had worn a T-shirt, short sleeved – a bad choice, since the day was dark and brooding, threatening thunderstorms. The wind came in unpredictable bursts, chilling her, and she crossed her arms. Her hands slid up beneath her sleeves, fingers caressing the warm bands of metal encircling her upper arms, and she shuddered.

"_Evelyn? Are you well?"_

The question startled her from her reverie, and she turned to stare in mild shock at the blue car. The voice had actually sounded… concerned.

She laughed, but the sound was all wrong, more like a croak, and she replied, "No. I'm really not."

And with one fierce jerk, she yanked the bracelets off her arms.

* * *

She thought, _It doesn't feel any different._

She thought, _I'm going to feel stupid if this doesn't work._

She thought, _This is still a really bad idea._

All these in the space of one heartbeat.

Then there came a sound from Mirage like nothing she had ever heard before – harsh and staticky, grating, nails-on-a-chalkboard and electronic screech all at once, loud enough to make her ears ring – and she did not know whether it was a curse or merely a sound of shock, but then she could hear a faint hum (_His engine? _she thought. _You can't ever hear his engine.)_ and the mech snarled, _"Put those back on! Immediately!__"_

That was probably a good idea. She slid the bands back into place, her heart rattling in her chest with adrenaline.

"_Get in!"_

She blinked at him. The hum came again, louder, and suddenly, the car was _right there, _canopy open like a gaping mouth.

"_You stupid__, _stupid_ little creature! Get in!_"

"But—"

"_NOW!__"_

She climbed in. She canopy snapped shut before she had even seated herself fully, and Evelyn suddenly knew the intimate definition of 'to peel out.' They spun around the way they had come, and they were rocketing down the narrow road with speed that made her dizzy.

"They're halfway around the world," she protested. "We have time—"

"_No time! We have _no _time at all."_

"But—"

The air buzzed. She shook her head, wondering if she was hearing something in Mirage's systems that she had not before, but the buzzing grew. Within a space of seconds, it grew from a buzz to a thrum and louder still. She pressed her hands over her ears, but it did nothing to help, and Mirage slammed on the brakes, sliding them off the road and among a patch of undergrowth at the edge of the trees.

The thrum grew to a shriek that drilled into her skull, forcing the breath from her lungs, and there was a sound like a thunderclap. Her ears rang in the ensuing silence.

"_Don__'t move," _said Mirage, voice deathly soft, barely loud enough for her to hear. _"Don__'t move, don't speak, don't even _breathe."

In the sky above them, motionless in a way that defied all laws of physics, a purple and black jet hovered, bathing them in its shadow.

* * *

**End Chapter Nine**


	11. SS: Hunch

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **mild cursing, mild gore

**Author Notes:** Several people mentioned that Skywarp's teleportation isn't meant for such long distances. I agree, but according to my research, there was an incident in the IDW 'verse where he teleported from America to the Middle East. Here, I'm framing it as something that doesn't happen often due to the strain on his systems.

Now, onward!

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Chapter Ten: Interlude**

* * *

_**Al Powell: **__What's this about?  
__**John McClane: **__Oh, just a feeling I have.  
__**Al Powell: **__Ouch. When you get those feelings, insurance companies start to go bankrupt.  
_**– Die Hard II**

* * *

(Primus help me, would you _stop that?)_

Sideswipe froze. He had been contemplating the state of the parking lot, scanning the multitudes of cracks marring its surface, and pondering whether it would be worth it to attempt a quick recharge before his next assigned patrol. Parked beside him, Sunstreaker revved his engine moodily.

(Um… what?)

(Stop it. Whatever you're doing, stop it _now.)_

(… you want me to stop looking at the pavement?)

(You're twitching.)

Sideswipe mulled that over. (I was not.)

(Yes. You were.)

(Not.)

There came a subtle _thump_ along the bond. (In here. You're twitching. Stop it.)

Sideswipe _thump_ed back, because it was practically a required response, and said, (My mind is twitching?)

(Yes. Whatever you're worrying about, knock it off. I'm trying to recharge.)

(I'm not worried.)

Silence and a thick feeling of disbelief filtered through the bond. Sideswipe hunkered low on his tires. (I'm _not.)_

_Thump._

(Stop that!)

(That's for lying.)

Sideswipe revved his engine and pulled up and over into a different parking spot. He turned his attention very determinedly back to the much-abused pavement.

There was a brief period of blessed silence, broken only by the passing of cars on the nearby highway and the distant hum of the city.

Sunstreaker eased into the spot next to Sideswipe.

(What's wrong?) Gone was the growling and teasing. Nothing but utter seriousness and, faintly beneath that, concern came across the bond.

Sideswipe could not formulate an answer in words. He was restless, but no amount of action or exploration eased it. He was tired, but recharge did nothing. He _was _worried, but there was nothing to worry over – when they met the 'Cons, they would take care of it as they always had, fierce and swift as they were created to be. Until that time came, worry was useless, but it still plagued him like a bit of rogue code that he could not quite catch hold of to delete.

He bundled everything up in one messy ball of thought-feeling-memory and pushed it toward his twin, and then he waited while Sunstreaker deciphered the muddle.

(You're worrying about nothing,) said Sunstreaker at last, flatly.

A cold chill seemed to creep through his circuits, and he upped his battle programming by a level, scanning his surroundings.

(Sunny, I'm serious, something is _wrong.)_

(I've got nothing on my sensors, Sideswipe.)

(How can you not _feel _that?)

It was like the world itself was pressing in all around him. He sent the feeling to Sunstreaker and felt his brother increase energy to his own sensors, scanning their surroundings.

(Sideswipe, there's _nothing—)_

The energy registered on his long-range scanners like the distant flare of a star, so abrupt that he sat there dumbly for a moment and stared.

(The _frag?) _Sunstreaker snarled, and his engine was roaring loud enough to rattle his plating, and the comm came alive in a burst of chatter that flooded his audios.

_:What in the name of…:_

_:Prowl, you seein' this?:_

_:Primus in the Pit, why would she…?:_

_:That can't be right! There's no way!:_

Prowl's voice cut through the chatter like a beam-saber. :_All of you, on the road and en route immediately! We'll rendezvous on the way. Jazz, I need a comm line to Mirage.:_

_:No can do, Prowler. 'Raj is shut down tighter than Red's office during anti-virus updates.:_

_:Fine. Sideswipe? Sunstreaker?:_

To Sideswipe's astonishment, Sunstreaker replied. _:On our way.:_

And putting action to words, the yellow twin peeled out of the parking lot like the Unmaker himself were after him, and Sideswipe followed a moment later. They did not _merge _into traffic so much as plow through it, picking openings that no human driver would dare take and speeding through the confining streets of town in a manner that left utter chaos in their wake. Blue lights twinkled distantly in their rear-views, swiftly left behind.

Sideswipe followed in his brother's tracks, feeling as though something massive were looming over him, waiting to strike.

* * *

**End Chapter Ten**


	12. Fire

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **mild cursing, mild gore

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Chapter Eleven**

* * *

_In the debating chamber of his mind a dozen emotions got to their feet and started shouting. Relief was in full spate when Shock cut in on a point of order and then Bewilderment, Terror and Loss started a fight which was ended only when Shame slunk in from next door to see what all the row was about.__  
_**– The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett**

* * *

_I didn't know they could do that._

She stared, frozen, unable to process what she was seeing.

_That's impossible. _

_How can they do that?_

The jet hovered motionless above them, several hundred feet above the forest… over where they had been just moments ago. Had she raised her hand, she could have blocked it from her vision with her palm, and yet she could feel it looming above her like a thunderstorm, just waiting to explode.

Not that she dared move at all. She sat frozen, barely breathing, eyes locked on the silhouette overhead.

No sound came from Mirage, but she could feel the faint thrum of his systems all around her. She could almost picture him as a cat crouched and awaiting the opportune moment to bolt.

The jet transformed.

The mechanical shriek echoed through the woods, startling birds into flight, and suddenly it was no longer a jet but a giant black and purple mech that hovered above the trees, peering this way and that with optics that gleamed blood-red. The heels of his feet were jet turbines, blazing white, and he balanced upon them in midair as he made a slow circuit, scanning his surroundings.

_Oh, _she thought distantly. _They do look like high heels…_

The mech's turbines cut off, and he dropped into the forest with a thunderous roar that shook the ground and bounced Mirage on his tires. Evelyn squeaked and clamped a hand over her mouth. Trees shuddered and snapped as the black and purple mech forced himself through them, and faintly, so faintly, Evelyn could hear him cursing in Cybertronian.

"Stupid, fragging, useless—ugh, get out of the _way, _you piece of—" A particularly stubborn tree shattered with a sound like a rifle shot, and the mech stepped into the road. It made little difference.

He was massive. Evelyn had thought that Sunstreaker and Sideswipe made the likes of Jazz and Prowl appear small, but this mech dwarfed them all. The jet's wings jutted out from his shoulders, making him seem all the larger and making it nearly impossible for him to maneuver among the trees. He swatted at the branches that clung to crevases in his armor, snarling.

_Invisible, _Evelyn thought, half in realization and half as reassurance. _We're invisible. He can't see us. We're invisible. He can't see us._

He paused for a moment, vents humming with exertion, and he scuffed one foot along the road. The asphalt crumbled like dried mud.

"Primus-forsaken mudball," he grumbled. "Guys, there's nothing out here!"

He paused, head tilted as though listening, and then said, "Um, _yeah, _I'm sure. Just more of these stupid poofy pole things." He shoved a nearby tree over. This one did not snap, but its roots tore free of the earth as it fell. The mech glowered at it. "Yeah, trees, whatever. I'm saying, there is zilch over here… _Yes_, I've scanned."

He grumbled. With a lazy flick of his hand, he snatched a branch from another tree and proceeded to shred it with quick, frustrated motions.

"Oh, for Primus' sake!" He tossed down the remnants of the branch and snarled, "If you want to look, come over here and look! I am in the middle of squishy, organic _nowhere._ I told you I shouldn't 'port that far! _Yes, I'm at the right coordinates!"_

Another pause. The mech stomped on the road, peeling up slabs of asphalt with his toe and flicking them into the undergrowth. One piece slid along the ground to _thunk _against one of Mirage's tires. Evelyn's heart stopped.

"Yeah. Yeah. Well, sure. _What!"_ The force of the shriek sent a spike of agony through Evelyn's skull, and the mech's optics flared. "I _can't_ 'port back! I nearly fried a circuit getting here! Oh, _ha ha, _you're such a funny mech… Fine. Fine. I'll meet you halfway. Fine. Yeah, whatever. Ugh."

_Invisible. He can't see us…_

The mech shook his head once, spitting another curse, and he leapt into the air, jets flashing on and propelling him upward even as he transformed. For a moment, and black and purple jet balanced nose-upward in the air, and then he was gone in a roar of engines and a rush of superheated air. Dry leaves burst into flame beneath the onslaught, branches and dirt and rocks flung all directions, pelting Mirage's chassis. Evelyn cringed away, feeling the heat through the glass even at a distance.

The jet dwindled away into the sky, a blot and then a speck.

_Oh, my god._

Evelyn's heart thundered in her chest, racing so fast that it felt as though it would burst. She placed her hand over it, daring to breathe for the first time in… God, had it only been a few minutes?

"Mirage?" she whispered.

The mech did not reply. He did not move.

Evelyn shivered.

"Mirage, are you alright?"

"_Be quiet."_

She cringed.

"But…"

"_Up."_

She looked up.

There was a tiny speck, high in the sky, circling.

"… what is he…"

The speck grew larger.

She stared.

Larger.

It was not longer a speck but a jet, tiny but recognizable. She could see the glint of light on its cockpit.

Larger.

She could see which parts were purple and which parts were black.

"What…?"

In a whip-quick motion, the jet pulled up. For the briefest moment, she could see the details of his underside, the purple insignia upon his wings. There was the impression of something falling from him, and then he was gone.

Mirage spat something that might have been a curse, but it was lost as the forest around them exploded in noise and heat and light.

Mirage must have rolled, because Evelyn remembered pressing her hands against the canopy as the world turned upon its head, but somehow they were upright again – whether through sheer luck or some maneuver on Mirage's part, she did not know. There was an impression of branches all around, and the sound of Cybertronian curses, and the sound of wood cracking and a dull hum that might have been Mirage's engine.

When her vision cleared, they were moving, Mirage racing down tiny, twisting road that were never meant for speed. Her entire body was tossed from side to side as he took turns that would have put a human sports car into a barrel-roll into the forest. She braced herself as best as she was able, swallowing back nausea, her head throbbing.

She had the strangest impression of sunset, and she glanced back, curious of the golden-red glow, and behind her, sheets of flame roared upward from the trees, billowing clouds of black smoke choking out the pale sky.

She couldn't breathe.

Houses. They were passing houses and cars and _my god, my god…_

She choked out a soft, "Mirage…"

"_Be quiet."_

There was no sign of the jet above them, but the sky was growing dark from smoke, and every now and then, a curve in the road would reveal the glowing hell that had once been tranquil forest.

Mirage swerved around the last turn onto the highway, and Evelyn could only lean back in the seat and pray as the world around them became nothing more than multicolored blurs sweeping past, the blue and white mech pushing himself to speeds Evelyn had never before experienced. She clenched her hands in her lap, every muscle tense and aching. Her breath came in quick, hiccupy pants, and with a full-body shudder, she curled in on herself, pressing fists against her eyes.

_I'm sorry, _she thought, over and over in a hopeless mantra. _Oh, god. I'm so, so sorry._

Behind them, the sky grew steadily darker as smoke billowed upward, tainting the pale winter sky as the world burned.

* * *

**End Chapter Eleven**


	13. Aftermath

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.

Because, you know, stealing is wrong.

* * *

**Title: **Schism

**Summary: **Sparkbearer Saga: Part II. Alien invasions, possessed vehicles, language barriers, government conspiracies, family drama, supermarket tabloids, and tomato wars... Welcome to Earth.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **mild cursing, mild gore

**Author Notes: **… Um… excuse time, I guess?

I wrote a book. And now I'm editing it. And if it passes muster with my family/friends/random-passing-strangers, I'll start the whole _'let's see if this isn't a monumental piece of crap to the editing world and hope an agent wants to read more than the opening paragraph'_ process. (If it is a monumental piece of crap, it'll be on to another project, but that's a worry for another time.)

So… it's not like I haven't been writing. I just haven't been writing _here._

(Also? This chapter was _really, really hard._ And I'm still not happy with it. But it's over with now, so we can move on to other things. *insert Flutter-yay here*)

But I'm back! For now. We'll see. But I'm _not _giving up on this story. It's like an old car – lots of sputtering and stops and starts, but it'll get you where you want to go in the end. ;3

(Seriously. The Sparkbearer Saga _will _be finished… Cafei knows where I live.)

* * *

**Transformers: Schism**

**Chapter Twelve**

* * *

_She calls out to the man on the street__.  
__He can see she's been crying__.  
__She's got blisters on the soles of her feet__,  
__Can't walk but she's trying__.  
_**-**_**Another Day in Paradise**_**,**** Phil Collins**

* * *

She had been exiled to the far corner of the warehouse. Jazz and Prowl and Hound and the others stood in a loose huddle at the other end of the building, all except Mirage. Mirage had vanished without a word, and Evelyn could not blame him. Occasionally, a low mutter of voices echoed across the distance to her, but she did not care enough to try and decipher any words.

She could still smell the smoke.

_Fire and flame all around, the crackle and roar, like an angry beast, and the world blurring past..._

She clenched her hands on her lap. They trembled no matter how hard she tried to still them.

_Oh, god._

She barely remembered the trip back. There had been a blurred impression of speed and colors swirling past. She remembered blue and red flashing lights, red and yellow on either side, and a distant sense of _safe_.

But _safe_ had been lost beneath guilt and horror and nausea welling up from deep within, and as soon as Mirage had let her out inside the warehouse, she had stumbled to the side and retched miserably onto the oil-stained cement.

Even Bluestreak hadn't said anything.

Jazz had looked into her eyes briefly, and she had a sense that he was seeing more than just her outer appearance – maybe he had scanners like Ratchet, or maybe his visor had more capabilities than she knew. Her thoughts had swirled around that idea, disjointed, like a flurry of snowflakes. The Porsche had declared her bruised but otherwise unharmed and said something about "acute stress reaction," whatever that meant.

_Shock? _she had wondered. _I think that means shock._

A blanket was produced from somewhere, and she had been bundled up, lifted to the top of one of the shipping crates, given a bottle of water, and left to herself.

"Evelyn."

She blinked, looking up from the dirt-encrusted crescents of her fingernails. Prowl was looking at her.

She did not say anything. Her throat felt too tight, her mouth too dry, even after trying to drink some water. Even if she had tried to respond, she was uncertain whether any sound would emerge. She nodded.

"We need to speak about this."

She clenched her eyes shut. A tremor swept through her entire body. She still felt that chill, that sensation of being lost in the shadow of massive dark wings.

"Evelyn."

Her chest ached, and when she breathed in, it came as a trembling gasp. Prowl had stepped over to the crate, Jazz flanking him on one side, the others arrayed behind them. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe stood nearest the back, their expressions unreadable.

That spike of sorrow, that sudden longing for _her _Sideswipe, swept into the mix of confusing emotions already swamping her. Her Sideswipe wouldn't have looked so grim.

She dragged her attention back to Prowl. The tactician's doorwings stood stiffly upright, flared wide.

"Do you understand what you've done?"

Prowl didn't yell. Somehow, that made it all the worse.

She drew in a shaking breath. When she spoke, it was barely more than a whisper.

"I didn't …"

Her throat closed around the rest of her words.

_I didn't know they could do that._

_I didn't mean for that to happen._

_I didn't think anyone would get hurt._

… _I didn't know what else to do._

"Evelyn, you've put us in a position of extreme jeopardy. While the Seekers were so far distant, the chances of them picking up clues of our whereabouts were extremely low. But you've drawn them into scanning range of us and put them on the hunt."

She closed her eyes and nodded. "I know."

"Honestly, I'm not sure how to handle this. Were you a mech, I'd have you placed in confinement until such a time as I felt you were no longer a liability. It's obviously not a viable choice here, no matter how tempting I find it."

She forced herself to open her eyes and look up at the mech. There was no emotion on the tactician's face, but she could hear the elevated hum of his systems, see the pale flickering of his optics. He was furious.

"I had to do something," she said.

"You had to endanger us all? You had to draw enemy units within optic-range? You had to place an _unsuspecting _mech directly in the line of fire and… what? Hope for the best?"

A tiny spark of defiance flared.

"Nobody mentioned _teleporting_," she said.

"It wasn't relevant until you decided to set yourself out like some sort of sacrificial offering to invite an elite Trine to set up camp on top of our base. When exactly did that seem like a viable plan?"

"You weren't going to do anything."

"We were doing plenty. We were gathering intel. We were biding our time. We were _following orders."_

The spark burst outward into flame.

"I had to do _something!"_

Her voice broke, the shout echoing through the warehouse. Her vision wavered, blurred by tears, and she swiped them away angrily.

"People were dying anyway." _Fire and smoke and purple and black, oh, god, no._ She clenched her hands into fists, ignoring the burn as her fingernails cut into her palms. "They were dying anyway. And humans can't fight them! We _can't. _No one else even knows what they are – they think it's the US if it's anybody. Should I have waited until World War III broke out and then done something? Google that! Would that have been any better?"

"Evelyn, we are meant to keep you hidden and safe. We are not a strike team."

The anger flared within her anew, bright and sharp and painful.

"I am _not _going to hide away while Earth is being blown to bits by _your _war." The words came fast and ugly. "If all I can do is play bait and get them within shooting range, then that's what I'll do, but you don't get to sit back and say 'too bad' when you're the only ones that can make a difference! You can't do that to us! You _do not_ get to make that call!"

"And you do?" Prowl's tone grew even colder, if that were possible. "You have no idea what we're facing. You don't know their capabilities, their intelligence, their tactics, or even their purpose, but you know enough to plant a target beacon in the middle of this region and think that's a _good idea?"_

"They were killing people!"

"You may well have killed people _today."_

That hit like a punch to the gut. If she had not been sitting already, she would have fallen.

Sideswipe broke in, voice sharp. "That's not fair."

"This conversation doesn't include you, Sideswipe."

"Oh, the frag it doesn't, _sir."_

She barely heard the argument. Those words tumbled around her, sharp-edged, like an avalanche of glass. _You may well have killed people today._

"Is that so?"

"Look, why the slag would Prime send me and Sunny if he didn't think someone's plating was going to get dented? It's kind of what we do."

_You killed people._

"Now is not the time."

"How much better of a setup do you need? They don't have a clue we're here. You've got two chassis-wrecking powerhouses ready and willing to kick some Seeker aft, a superspy that turns invisible at will, a crack-shot sniper, and… whatever the frag you want to call Jazz. I'd go with 'slagging terrifying', but that's just me."

"Sideswipe…"

_You. _

Air moved. A shadow swept over her, blocking out the world. Pale blue light gleamed off of sleek white and black metal, and a hand wrapped over her shoulders, sheltering her. The warmth seemed to burn into her.

"Evy. Breathe. Ya need t' calm down, okay?"

_Breathe. _She had not realized she had stopped. _Just breathe._

"That's the most ridiculous, half-sparked idea I've ever—"

"Hey, I know this is a novel concept, but sometimes crazy _works."_

"In an' out, Evy. Just in an' out." The mech's modulated voice seemed to roll over her like a warm tide.

She blinked, looking up at the black and white mech.

"Jazz. Jazz, how many…?"

"Don't."

"Please."

"We don't know yet."

She did not know if that made it better… or even worse.

She barely recognized her own voice. "Yet."

"They're still fighting the fires. At least three homes were destroyed, but no one has been reported missing yet."

_Yet. Not yet._

"I'm sorry," she whispered. She did not know if it was meant for the mechs around her or the faceless people suffering now because of her. "I'm so sorry."

"I know."

"Is… is Mirage okay?"

"He's fine. A bit scraped and dented, but it ain't nothin' t' glitch over."

She remembered her last glimpse of the blue and white mech before he had vanished. His eyes had been lightning-flash white.

"He must be furious."

"Raj'll cool down. So will Prowl. You jus'… kinda blindsided us. Wish you woulda' talked it over with us first."

"You would have stopped me."

"Maybe so. But that's oil long spilled, so I'm not gonna be th' one t' fritz at ya." He grinned, small and tense and yet somehow reassuring. "We got this. Okay? Whatever happens. No matter how much Prowl growls, or Raj sulks, or Blue does that puppy-dog eyes o' doom thing he does… It's gonna be okay."

She leaned into the warmth of his palm.

In the background, Prowl and Sideswipe were squabbling like a pair of hens over a worm, and Bluestreak and Hound were chiming in on points of interest. Jazz's systems rumbled gently, the vibration travelling through his palm and into her body.

"Thank you," she whispered.

* * *

**End Chapter Twelve**

* * *

**A/N: **I've also been renovating my corner of the web. My blog Scriptophrenia has been changed to the much more spellcheck-friendly Going Verbal (goingverbal-dot-wordpress-dot-com) and will be centered more around original writing, writing resources, and reviews of various books. It's still in mid-metamorphosis, so bear with me. Like I said, most of my attention is on editing my original fiction, but I'm going to be around more often now. We're going to be trying for a steadier once a week update, so you guys won't have to suffer a drought like this again. (Knock on wood.)


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